COLUMBUS – Hundreds of police officers, community officials, medical personnel and others gathered in Columbus yesterday for a summit aimed at fighting Ohio’s drug addiction epidemic.
The one-day meeting called by Attorney General Mike DeWine focused on programs being used successfully around the state to slow the epidemic and help its victims.
The topics included treating drug overdose scenes as crime scenes, using an anti-overdose drug to save lives, addressing addiction in jails, keeping addicts from doctor shopping and reaching out to overdose survivors once they’re back home.
A record 2,482 people in Ohio died from accidental overdoses in 2014, an 18 percent increase over the previous year. That includes a record 1,177 overdose deaths related to heroin, up from 986 in 2013.
DeWine is in favor of making naloxone more readily available to emergency medical personnel, study how law enforcement agencies are handling the issue of curing addicts in jail and how might operate differently, partnering with others and helping addicts, how state drug task forces are dealing with investigations, using the State Board of Pharmacy’s online prescription drug database in investigations and how the Ohio Attorney General’s Heroin Unit Outreach Team and other state resources can help communities with solutions.
The measures are similar to those included in the federal Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act of 2015, co-sponsored by U.S. Sen. Rob Portman, which would strengthen prescription drug monitoring to help states track prescription drug diversion and to help at-risk individuals access services.