Over the past few years, new developments into the nature of substance use and West Virginias’ ongoing opioid epidemic has prompted novel and proven effective ways on how we respond.
More than ever before, it’s being recognized that response to the opioid crisis goes beyond just the need for law enforcement, but behavior and mental health experts and prevention and recovery specialists as well.
U.S. Senator Shelley Moore Capito is among the leaders who have recognized the need for more collaboration between these groups, which is why she has been organizing The West Virginia Opioid Summit bringing together other state and community leaders to further discuss new and improved plans in tackling the state’s drug epidemic.
The summit last week in Dunbar consisted of individual panels focused on one of three main themes: research and prevention, recovery and law enforcement.
“The scourge of drugs, specifically deadly opioids like fentanyl, has affected far too many West Virginians and their loved ones in our state,” Capito says in a statement.
“Today, some of our brightest minds and strongest leaders came together to identify solutions that have and will continue to combat this crisis. Together, we have identified strategies that will help prevent more West Virginians from falling into the grip of addiction, effectively treat those dealing with substance use disorder and set them on a path of reaching their full potential and keep dangerous drugs out of our communities in the first place,” she continued.
Capito is a ranking member of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health, and Human Services, and Related Agencies (Labor HHS).
As a ranking member of this subcommittee, and from her earliest days in the U.S. Senate, Capito has focused much of her efforts to responding to the state’s drug epidemic.
The Drug Prevention Summit Capito organized in Martinsburg in April of 2015 marked one of her first initiatives to tackle the drug problem. Friday’s summit in Dunbar was a follow up to the 2015 summit.
Capito has also put language into several bills supporting the hardest hit states and communities from the epidemic and delivered federal grant funding for organizations who are fighting the scourge of opioids throughout the Mountain State.
In September, Capito announced that West Virginia was awarded over $45 million in funding from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration’s (SAMHSA) State Opioid Response (SOR) grant program, bringing a significant amount of more money the state needed in fighting the crisis.
Since the SOR grant program was created in 2018, Capito has secured over $200 million for the state in fighting the problem.
Supervisory Special Agent for FBI Pittsburgh Jeff Cisar was one of the speakers in Friday’s panel speaking specifically on the law enforcement side of the opioid epidemic.
Cisar told MetroNews being on the frontline of the epidemic, law enforcement officers have to see the effects first-hand.
“Today I’m going to discuss from the law enforcement side how we see the new trends in opioids, synthetic opioids in particular Fentanyl, what we’re seeing from in the trenches view, which I think is a view that not a lot of the panel sees, we see it everyday,” Cisar said.
He said they would also be discussing the new, creative ways law enforcement have implemented in taking down the criminal organizations who deal the opioids. Cisar said they have had to adapt to changes in addressing the surge of dangerous drugs such as Fentanyl over the last five years.
He said coming to terms with the fact that drug addiction is a disease has been enlightening for law enforcement officers as well as posed even more challenges for them as they now must navigate who needs to be incarcerated and who needs serious treatment.
“We work at that level of where we’re dealing with addiction but also where we are in the trenches, trying to take that level of addiction we have to ultimately determine the source of supply,” he said.
Cisar said there are people who don’t fall into those categories of victim, or disease, or addiction, but rather, those people are in the business of making a profit off it.
He said those are the people law enforcement have more shifted their focus on.
“It’s a crime, they need to be put away, they need to be held accountable, not only because they’re selling drugs, but particularly with a drug like this, they’re killing people, this is murder,” Cisar said.
He said while the number of overdoes deaths may have dropped in the state, people are still dying every day from them.
But Cisar said that’s really been the challenge for them — finding the line between helping the addiction side of the problem by getting those dealing with the addiction the help they need versus holding those accountable who are fueling the problem.
He said and then there’s a middle-ground of what officers refer to as “user-dealer,” which is people who sell drugs to finance their own drug addiction. He said that’s when they always must ask, where do these people fall? What should be done about this specific group of people?
However, Cisar said, particularly speaking about the Eastern Panhandle, they know they’re now at the forefront of addressing these issues and tackling those criminal organizations.
But he said law enforcement hasn’t worked alone in this endeavor, rather it has been a major collaborative effort.
“Those folks that are in that area of addiction, of disease that need help, we aren’t the experts in that, we’re not supposed to be, we need to be aware of that though, and our partnerships with recovery centers, hospitals, with agencies like the High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area, these grants that we can get to help us,” he said. “They put a lot of money into West Virginia to try and help us tackle that part of it, the addiction part of it, the mental part of it, the disease part of this.”
Director of Community Corrections in Berkeley County Tim Czaja was another speaker at the drug summit.
He said he would be talking about all of his corrections programs he’s responsible for in Berkeley County that are truly seeming to help the situation, such as the Day Report Center, the Home Confinement program, the Community Service program, and the Recovery Resource Center, which is not a corrections program, but a program that’s open to the public.
Czaja said they’re realizing that it takes more than simply locking someone up for using drugs.
“We’ve learned that we can’t incarcerate our way out of the problem,” Czaja said. “We’ve learned that when we just put people who are dealing with substance use disorder in jail, it becomes a revolving door and it’s really expensive.”
He said it’s far cheaper for taxpayers to allow these programs to operate in the community and to give those addicted the opportunity to live in the community while getting treatment and the help they need.
Czaja said these treatment facilities and programs work to address the whole mental aspect behind addiction, rewiring the brain of a person who’s addicted, and correcting their behavior.
“Long-term substance users, their brains can’t enjoy life the way they once did, it’s called Acute Withdrawal Syndrome,” he said. “It takes up to 12 months for a person’s brain to heal to the point where they get to enjoy life again without substances.”
However, Czaja said the one thing still holding people back from getting the help they need–stigma.
“It’s embarrassing, you know, family members who have a child who struggles with addiction don’t want people to know because they feel embarrassment, the person struggling from addiction doesn’t necessarily want people to know because it’s embarrassing,” he said.
In addition to that he said there’s a lot of people in the community who look down on those who are suffering from drug addiction as they consider them moral failures.
Czaja said, however, once people can understand that it’s a disease of the mind, they will understand that it’s not the addict who is the problem but it’s the sickness itself. He said showing more compassion for them will better help the issue moving forward.
But, Czaja said there’s already a lot more positive attention being paid to the situation, more education and more progress starting to be made. He said it’s just something that’s always going to require that level of acknowledgement and constant redirection.