43
Frustrated Trumbull officials seek state help with opiate crisis
By Ed Runyan
WARREN
Opioid epidemic in Trumbull County
Video
Trumbull County mental health official explains why county commissioners are asking state officials to declare Ohio's opiate epidemic an emergency.
Frustration is what drove Trumbull County commissioners to approve a resolution seeking a state of emergency for its opiate crisis, state Sen. Sean O’Brien said.
Commissioners joined their counterparts throughout Ohio to ask Gov. John Kasich and the General Assembly for the designation Wednesday.
“I understand what they are going through,” said O’Brien of Bazetta, D-32nd. “You see it just turning on the TV and reading the newspaper. What did we have, 189 overdoses, 26 deaths in March alone? That’s almost a death a day.”
The statistics O’Brien cited came from the Trumbull County Board of Mental Health and Recovery, whose director, April Caraway, helped the commissioners prepare the resolution.
TRUMBULL COUNTY'S OPIOID EPIDEMIC
Caraway told the commissioners and others attending the Wednesday meeting that the overdose death total for the county is at 39 for the first three months of the year, which is on pace to exceed the record 106 in 2016.
“We are all as counties trying to get the state governor’s office to put some more money toward this problem,” Caraway said.
Commissioner Mauro Cantalamessa said Kasich is giving “a lot of service” from Columbus. “We need more action.”
The governor’s office responded by saying the state is spending about $1 billion per year on the problem. That includes $650 million in health care for Ohioans with addictions and behavioral health issues, $88 million to mental-health boards, and treatment programs in the prisons, spokesperson Emmalee Kalmbach said.
She said a state of emergency would not automatically carry with it any funding for Trumbull or other counties.
“At the end of the day, regardless of the state of the issue, the governor is already treating this drug epidemic with a sense of emergency,” Kalmbach said.
In Monday’s Vindicator, the editorial board wrote, “The clear and present danger in Trumbull County, however, demands a rapid response. Now with the county of 200,000 standing as ground zero in the destructive epidemic and now with no end in sight to the exponential increase in casualties there, emergency action and assistance cannot be delayed. We call on state and federal officials to muster up the requisite will and compassion to act promptly.”
Trumbull County ranked 12th highest in overdose deaths per 100,000 people in the most recent Ohio Department of Health statistics from 2015. It placed Trumbull second highest in Northeast Ohio, with Jefferson county having the highest at 28.8 and Trumbull having 27.7.
The other highest per-capita rates were in southern Ohio, with Brown County near Cincinnati having the highest at 40.2.
“It’s not just the deaths. It is so affecting our community in the sense that you are having people pass away who are your neighbors, your friends. You’re having resources strained on law enforcement and jails,” O’Brien said.
There are also children being left without parents by overdose deaths, and the state has cut financial support for counties, he said. “The cuts to the locals have really affected their ability to fight this epidemic.”
He pointed to the state of Maryland that recently pledged $50 million to fight the epidemic there. “We haven’t pledged any, and they are half the population we have,” O’Brien said.
Caraway said the Ohio Association of County Behavioral Health Authorities, which lobbies on behalf of mental health and recovery boards in the state, created a template resolution that it is urging counties across the state to approve.
Caraway said she’s also hearing that four recent suicides in a week’s time may also be connected to drug addiction, though she referred specific questions to the coroner’s office.
Shelley Mazanetz, chief investigator at the coroner’s office, said she can confirm that one of four suicides investigated in the past week involved a addict, one involved a a relationship issue, but she didn’t know about the other two.
Joe Robinson, who runs MedStar Ambulance in Warren, said having to handle so many overdose calls can be frustrating for ambulance workers when they have to revive the same person multiple times.
“EMS saves you once, and you go right back out and do it again,” he said.