Jan 14, 2018 3 min read

The opioid epidemic has been churning on for so long, and has hindered or ended so many lives, that it’s hard to feel much confidence that it can eventually be tamed. Consider the chilling projections that as many as 650,000 Americans will die as a result of opioid overdoses over the next 10 years – that’s more than twice the number of people who live within Pittsburgh’s municipal boundaries.

However, two news stories from the middle of last week offered some room for cautious optimism.

First came the declaration Wednesday from Gov. Tom Wolf that Pennsylvania was facing a disaster emergency as a result of the opioid crisis. Basically, a disaster emergency puts the opioid epidemic on the same par as a natural disaster or severe storm, and allows for some regulations to be temporarily lifted to fight it.

Pennsylvania is fourth in the nation in deaths due to drug overdoses, and more than 5,000 people died of overdoses across the commonwealth last year. It now joins seven other states, including our neighbors in Maryland, in making an emergency declaration in the face of the opioid crisis.

Among other things, the emergency declaration allows first responders to leave behind naloxone, the overdose-reversing drug, when they treat someone who could well overdose again. A command center will also be established at the Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency (PEMA) to coordinate the response to the epidemic among public safety and health agencies, and 13 statutory regulations “that create barriers to treatment and prevention, prevent first responders and others from saving lives and reduce efficiency in our response” will be waived.

Wolf said, “It is imperative that we use every tool to try to contain and eradicate this public health crisis. The numbers are … staggering. The impact is devastating. We cannot allow it to continue.”

And, as the governor pointed out, this is a crisis of public health, not a crisis of law enforcement. We cannot eradicate this epidemic by locking up addicts. Dealers, on the other hand, should face the full weight of the law.

On the same day that Wolf made the disaster emergency declaration, the Washington Opioid Overdose Coalition received a commendation from the Drug Enforcement Administration for its work in combating the epidemic locally. And it appears the Red Ribbon Award, which has only been given to one other group nationally, is warranted. Even as overdose deaths climbed in Pennsylvania last year, the rate dropped by 12 percent in Washington County, from 106 deaths in 2016, to 94 in 2017.

Brian Dempsey, a Pittsburgh-based intelligence specialist for the DEA, explained that officials with the DEA “saw what was being done in Washington County, and it really is a model for the rest of the country.”

So local officials should keep up the good work. But they shouldn’t rest until the annual number of opioid overdoses hits zero.