County plans its opioid response
z Floyd County commissioners expect to establish a board to work on community initiatives separate from a class-action lawsuit.
The Floyd County Commission is preparing to establish a community board to address the problems of opioid addiction.
Floyd Against Drugs may be tapped as the lead agency, Commission Chair Rhonda Wallace said, but the initiative will likely include representatives from NAMI Rome, Highland Rivers Health, the city of Rome and other governments.
“It could be regional,” said County Clerk Erin Elrod, who researched what other cities and counties have done across the nation. “Someone needs to fund a coordinator to put it all together.”
Rome and Floyd County joined a class action lawsuit against a dozen or so top opioid manufacturers, seeking to recoup costs of dealing with local addictions they call epidemic.
Cartersville and Chattooga and Whitfield counties also are part of the suit that Rome attorneys Andy Davis and Bob Finnell said has been accepted by a federal district court in Ohio, where claims from around the country are being consolidated.
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The Polk County Commission recently joined another group of municipalities in a suit filed by Cedartown law firm Parker and Lundy.
While officials are hoping for a settlement to fund local efforts, Floyd commissioners said they don’t want to wait to take aim at the problems.
“Opioids are our immediate crisis, but we should think about expanding this to all drugs,” Commissioner Wright Bagby said.
The concept was seconded by Commissioner Allison Watters. She noted that experts such as Dr. Bob Williams — who headed the detoxification program at the nowclosed Northwest Georgia Regional Hospital — have described their patients as “poly-addicted” to a number of different substances.
Crisis responses
Elrod presented a summary of basic practices that have met with success in other communities, beginning with a coalition ranging from health professionals, courts and police to teachers, faith leaders and employers.
“And a lot of places have some kind of drug diversion task force, trying to catch it on the streets,” she said.
Examples are the city of Everett, Washington, which pairs police officers with social workers; Arlington, Massachusetts, which added a mental health clinician to its police department; and the city of Binghamton, New York, which has an “intensive care navigator” to support people leaving short-term crisis centers.
Rome and Floyd County police already have been issued and trained in the use of Narcan to combat opioid overdoses, but some other communities go farther.
“In bigger cities they have the spray at libraries and places where homeless and other at-risk people congregate,” Elrod said.
Floyd County “is ahead of the game” with its drug court, she said, but some communities are trying innovative referral programs that encourage addicts to turn themselves in.
Anaheim, California, and Gloucester, Massachusetts, are two places where people can approach police, turn over their drugs and be connected to recovery resources without facing charges.
Community mobilization events, partnerships with schools, and publicizing the state prescription drug monitoring program to cut down on “doctor shopping” are among the other potential initiatives. Education on what’s already in place is another.
“We have safe drug disposal sites, but a lot of people don’t know about them,” Elrod said.
There are 24-hour locked drop boxes at Walgreen’s, 701 Martha Berry Blvd., and at the Floyd County Jail booking lobby, 2526 New Calhoun Highway, in Rome.
In nearby counties, there are boxes at the Chattooga County Sheriff’s Office in Summerville, open from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. during the week, and 24/7 at the Polk County Sheriff’s Office, 1676 Rockmart Highway in Cedartown and the Bartow County Jail, 104 Zena Drive in Cartersville.
“These are all good ideas, and we’ll be identifying people to work on them,” Wallace said.
The lawsuits are based on marketing in recent years of opioid drugs like OxyContin and hydrocodone as safe alternatives to older painkillers such as morphine.
Nationally, the prescribing rate in 2016 was 66.5 prescriptions per 100 people, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — but some counties had rates that were seven times higher.
Floyd County’s rate was 153.3 per 100, while Chattooga’s was 131.4 and Polk’s was 166.8.