Heroin plagues battlefront must include jails, prisons

The TIGHT link between drug addiction and criminal activity long has been well documented. Today, drug and alcohol-related offenses account for 80 percent of the U.S. prison population, Sovereign Health Group reported last month.

In fact, county jails and state prisons have evolved into the most-populous detox centers across the country. Too often, however, the cold-turkey strategy of recovery used by many correctional facilities fails miserably, leading to renewed addiction, a renewed life of crime and a return check-in to the local or state pokey. As that cycle continues, the impact on taxpayers to finance incarceration snowballs, and the impact on addicts worsens toward an anguishing unproductive existence behind bars and, in far too many cases, a slow and painful death.

As the heroin epidemic gripping our region, state and nation continues to spiral out of control, breaking that revolving-door cycle must become a priority for our criminal justice and public health systems. A multi-agency pilot program beginning in Trumbull County offers promise and hope toward closing in on that goal.

As Vindicator Trumbull County Reporter Ed Runyan reported in a front-page story last Friday, the county’s common pleas court, sheriff’s department and Mental Health and Recovery Board have united to test a program that centers on treating inmates with a new and promising anti-addiction injection drug.

The program is modeled after one implemented last year in Lucas County called Direct Link. Its star player is an intramuscular drug called Vivitrol.

Matt Rizzo, who runs the program, said 70 to 75 percent of 38 former inmates in the program since it began have stayed in the program and off drugs.

Compare that result with the typical 20-percent success rate of inmates who do not receive medically-assisted treatment during and immediately after their incarceration, and one can begin to see why some view Vivitrol as a veritable wonder drug.

BENEFITS OF VIVITROL

Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute for Drug Abuse, has called the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s approval of Vivitrol for opiate addiction “an important turning point in our approach to treatment.”

Among its multitude of benefits cited by NIDA are these:

Vivitrol is nonaddictive and has no mood- or mind-altering effects. Unlike other medications for opiate addiction, Vivitrol has little potential for abuse and has no street value.

Vivitrol wields amazing endurance. Each injection takes effect within two days and lasts for one full month.

Vivitrol is safe and well-tolerated by most patients, with minimal side effects.

Vivitrol works effectively, research suggests. According to FDA trials, patients treated with Vivitrol were more likely to stay in treatment and refrain from using drugs.

Clearly, more-widespread use of the drug could prove valuable for state prisons and local jails. Unfortunately, along with that value comes an exorbitantly high price. One injectable dose of Vivitrol costs about $1,000.

In Trumbull County’s trial of the drug, that cost has been voluntarily borne by the family of the inmate. In Toledo, the program has been funded by two $100,000 grants from the Ohio Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services.

But the positive results in Lucas County, coupled with other success stories at 100 other jails and prisons across the country that have incorporated Vivitrol into their detoxification programs, make it worth an aggressive grant-searching initiative. We encourage courts, corrections and drug-abuse agencies throughout the Mahoning Valley to seek out such funding to expand the reach of its benefits.

Of course, as Trumbull County Common Pleas Court Judge W. Wyatt McKay says, Vivitrol alone is no “magic bullet.” Those receiving the treatments still must make a sincere commitment to free themselves from the pull of heroin and welcome the battery of counseling and other therapy that also are critical parts of the recovery regimen.

Nonetheless, the drug does rise as one potentially effective new tool in the growing arsenal of weapons to fight heroin abuse. Its successful expansion could produce fewer addicts, fewer inmates and safer communities. Those results make a compelling case for the Trumbull County Jail to continue its trial run and for other correctional facilities to follow its responsible lead.