We Must Do Something About Opioid Abuse

   By Tom Anselm

According to The Merriam-Webster Dictionary, an epidemic is ‘an outbreak or disease that spreads quickly and affects many individuals at the same time in a community.’ In the past 10 years or so, our region has been afflicted with a disease that is taking young lives at an alarming rate.

But this won’t be about the statistics of that disease. They can be found on many websites and in a recent United States Surgeon General report. This will be about what is happening, and what is being done about it.

If you haven’t guessed by now, I am referring to opioid abuse. And more specifically, the growing problem of heroin.

There are many experts studying this problem, this epidemic, if

you will. They know that the abuse starts with lower level drugs.

Young people are getting into their parents’ medicine cabinets.

Or they are buying pills from others. The costs are low; the ‘high’ is, well… high, and easy to take. They move on to heroin, now inexpensive and   in ‘convenient capsule form.’ The result is addiction. Or worse.

One dose of heroin can cause addiction. And one dose can kill. We are seeing these dire circumstances due to the heroin also being laced with Fentanyl, a high-potency opioid.. This makes the heroin so much more powerful and potentially deadly. And the suppliers are not exactly FDA approved, so who knows exactly what is in the dose being used.

To say this is a mess is an understatement. And I am oversimplifying a very complicated     situation. But there is just too much addiction, too much death, to not address this. In spite of the honest and continuous efforts of law enforcement task forces and prevention associations and organizations and speeches at schools and multi-rehab stints and frequent funerals, people are still making bad decisions to begin their path to destruction.

Destruction comes in the form of their own death, always too soon. Destruction in the hearts of those who are left to mourn. The friends, classmates, their own children, ministers, teachers. Their parents. To bury a child… just the worst horror that can be imagined

I remember back in the 1980s when then-First Lady Nancy Reagan campaigned against substance abuse. Her mantra was ‘Just Say No,’ and she was vilified as offering too simplistic and naïve a plan for a complicated problem. Then the drugs were marijuana, LSD, amphetamines, cocaine, and alcohol, soon to be joined by ecstasy and crack and meth. But was she on to something, maybe?

Again, there is no doubt great effort being expended by a great many people to end this scourge. But suppliers are still supplying. Sellers are still selling. And users are still using. Counselors at rehab facilities are having some successes, but reentries are happening all the time. And deaths. Oh, the deaths.

So, I have been asking myself… what can I do? Sadly, I can’t help those who have gone on. I can’t stop the supply, can’t track down the sellers. But there must be something more I can do.

This is a very special reason for concern. Jill and I have been blessed with a wonderful brood of grandchildren, destined to only grow in number. We know they will all be faced with temptations in their coming years, from friends, parties, the natural tendency of youth to be daring, and the freedom to make choices. And honestly, it scares me no end.

Not that these kids aren’t great kids. But we have seen great kids succumb to this curse time and again. One bad choice.

I am so saddened by all this loss. Searching for a plan of action. In the meantime, I will support my children in the raising of their own, and gently remind my grandchildren of their strength, as Mrs. Reagan said, to ‘just say no’ to that first temptation in the face of the inevitable peer pressure.

Maybe it is as simple as that or as complicated.

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