Official proposes withholding EMS if overdoses recur

An Ohio town has been so overwhelmed by drug overdose emergencies that a councilman proposed a three- strikes penalty, so EMS would not respond to an overdose victim who has required two previous interventions.

Middletown City Council member Dan Picard told the

Journal- News that arresting those who overdose on heroin or other drugs adds to the problem by straining the city budget, jail and court system.

“John Smith obviously doesn’t care much about his life, but he’s expending a lot of resources, and we can’t afford it,” Picard said.

City Manager Douglas Adkins didn’t immediately weigh in on the proposal, but he said that under state law, “when we are called to render aid, we generally have to treat whatever condition we encounter.” The state’s Good Samaritan law, designed to encourage people to report overdoses, prohibits police from arresting people onsite for the heroinrelated activity, Adkins said.

Adkins said he understands the frustrations that prompted Picard’s proposal. Last month, a barefoot 5- year- old boy walked two blocks to a relative’s house and announced that his parents were dead. First responders rushed to the scene and revived the boy’s parents from heroin overdoses.

“We are sick and tired of some people not caring about their kids enough to allow this to happen,” Middletown police said in a Facebook post.

The issue is so critical in Middletown that the city of 50,000 recently convened its 10th Heroin Summit.

Adkins posted a passionate, self- described “rant” on the city’s website, laying out the seriousness of the issue. Most of the shootings in Middletown, he said, are drug- related. He noted that neighboring Hamilton County is on track to have the most drug overdose deaths in the USA.

“We can’t arrest our way out of this,” Adkins said. “I can’t keep it out of the city. It’s a Middletown problem. It’s a southwest Ohio problem. It’s an Ohio problem. It’s a national epidemic.”

Drug overdoses have become the leading cause of death in Americans under 50, according to data from health agencies across the nation compiled by The New York Times.

Middletown is on pace to spend about $ 100,000 on the overdose drug Narcan alone this year, Adkins said. That’s about 10 times what the city budgeted.

“I’m not going to try to get into the moral implications of whether those laws are good or bad, they simply are the law in Ohio,” Adkins said. “What this means is that Middletown will spend about $ 1.5 million a year responding to and reacting to opioid addiction problems in the city. That’s money that could be spent on other priorities.”

MEL EVANS, AP Naloxone is used in heroin and morphine overdoses.