U.S. attorney heroin overdose task force report issued
PITTSBURGH – With prescription drug and heroin overdoses at epidemic levels, physicians need to be better educated about the problem at a time when drug treatment centers are at capacity, U.S. Attorney David J. Hickton’s committee on the public health crisis announced Monday.
The committee also pointed in its report to the need to increase the availability of naloxone, otherwise known as Narcan, the drug used to counteract the symptoms of a heroin overdose.
“We cannot prosecute our way out of this,” Hickton said, naming heroin and prescription drug abuse the number-one problem for law enforcement.
Hickton formed the task force in April, bringing community members, police, physicians and other stakeholders to the table to address an epidemic that didn’t exist three decades ago
Drug-related overdose deaths quadrupled in Pennsylvania, which has the seventh-highest number of them among U.S. states, said addiction specialist Michael T. Flaherty, the work group’s co-chairman.
In Allegheny County, the number of such deaths rose from 22 in 1986 to 288 in 2012.
Washington County had just two drug overdose deaths in 1992 as compared to 58 last year, its coroner, Tim Warco, said in February.
The group is asking community leaders and county commissioners to read its report and help to coordinate its recommendations, Flaherty said.
It also wants Pennsylvania lawmakers to enact a Prescription Drug Monitoring Program, an electronic database that would prevent drug addicts from “doctor shopping” to get more opioids than any one patient would need. The proposed law is on the table in Harrisburg.
“Hopefully, they’ll vote on it before the end of this session,” said Neil Capretto, medical director at Gateway Rehabilitation Center and co-chairman of Hickton’s group.
“Look at the mess we are in,” Capretto said.
The report urges the implementation of an overdose-prevention program for the incarcerated, and the creation of a program to educate probation officers and federal and state police about addiction and treatment.
It also recommends a commitment to increase the number of local drug and alcohol treatment programs.
There are 26 million Americans in need of drug abuse treatment, while the country’s treatment programs have the capacity to deal with just 2.7 million people, Flaherty said.
Hickton’s working group will reconvene in 120 days to compare notes.