By MARK HEIRBRANDT
County Commissioner
Opioid abuse in Indiana is on the rise. While I was researching the troubling effect of opioids on our communities in Indiana, I found these troubling statistics:
- Every two and a half hours, someone in Indiana is sent to the hospital for an opioid overdose.
- In Indiana, there are enough bottles of painkillers in circulation for nearly every Hoosier to have their own.
- Indiana is one of four states where the fatal drug overdose rate has quadrupled since 1999.
- Because of this rise, Hoosiers are now more likely to die from a drug overdose than a car accident.
These statistics are simply unacceptable for a state with so much potential. Stories about opioid abuse are far too prevalent and reach nearly every corner of society. Nearly everyone in our community has been touched in some way by the opioid epidemic. In Hamilton County, we are here to put an end to it.
Thanks to Monica Greer, Executive Director of the Hamilton County Council on Alcohol & Other Drugs, Kelly Gunn, project coordinator of the Transitioning Opportunities for Work, Education, & Reality program at the Hamilton County Jail, and Jim Ginder, Director of Education for the Hamilton County Health Department, Hamilton County has Opioid Overdose Boxes available to businesses in the community. These boxes contain gloves and two doses of NARCAN®, a nasal spray used to treat opioid overdoses.
“The public would be surprised to learn just how many overdoses happen in restaurants and hotels,” Greer said. “There’s very little time when someone overdoses to save them, so if we can treat them before emergency responders arrive it could literally mean the difference between life and death.”
Joining these life-saving measures with rehabilitation programs like TOWER that partners with inmates at the county jail is just one step in the right direction to eliminating the opioid epidemic in our community.
I was honored to be a part of the team from Hamilton County traveling to Erie, N.Y., last year as part of an Opioid Abuse Reduction grant provided by the Bureau of Justice Assistance. Programs like these are some of the first of its kind in our state, and we will continue to work until we can put an end to drug abuse in our area.