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Working Together
Editorial/Published: Monday, 4/20/2015/42 minutes ago
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A new local coalition will find new and smarter ways to battle addiction, but it needs help from grass-roots groups



Lucas County’s heroin and opioid crisis shows no signs of abating, but neither do local efforts to fight this epidemic of addiction. A new countywide coalition of law enforcement officials, treatment providers, judges, educators, and others is the latest in a series of high-profile regional initiatives aimed at preventing drug abuse, treating the disease of addiction, and saving lives.

Lucas County Sheriff John Tharp, who helped organize the group’s first meeting last month, told The Blade’s editorial page that the new coalition will continue the work of a county prevention partnership that folded nearly a decade ago.

Called the Lucas County Coalition, the group will, among other things, try to broaden education efforts in schools, identify gaps in prevention and treatment, improve communication among agencies, expand jail and prisoner diversion initiatives, eliminate service duplication, and tap state and federal funding for treatment and prevention programs throughout the county.

Helping to establish a planned drug and mental health help line and a Lucas County drug court also should make the coalition’s to-do list. By coming together, the people who run local public and private agencies will communicate and better use resources in the community.

The coalition includes representatives of the county sheriff’s and prosecutor’s offices, the Catholic Diocese of Toledo, Gov. John Kasich’s administration, the U.S. Attorney’s Office, the Toledo Police Department, the county Mental Health and Recovery Services Board, Toledo Public Schools, and Lucas County Common Pleas Court.

What the fledging group now lacks is direct input from grass-roots groups that could advise members on community problems and policy. Likewise, the coalition must understand that northwest Ohio’s heroin and opioid epidemic has gripped not only younger white people in the suburbs, but also African-Americans in Toledo’s central city.

John Edwards, Sr., the executive director of the Urban Minority Alcoholism and Drug Abuse Outreach Program in Lucas County, told The Blade’s editorial page that more than half of his treatment clients struggle with prescription painkillers and heroin. “It’s definitely affecting the central city,” he said. “In 2014, pills became a big issue.”

Experts such as Mr. Edwards could help the new coalition reach under-served people who are disconnected from traditional health-care services.

The coalition is right to focus on prevention. In the long term, education will determine whether this epidemic abates or continues to increase exponentially.

An estimated 10,000 people in the Toledo area are addicted to heroin and other opioids. Fatal heroin-related overdoses here have quadrupled in the past two years, from less than 40 in 2012 to roughly 150 last year.

Equally troubling, Fentanyl — a super-potent painkiller that is sometimes laced with heroin to provide an extra kick — has resurfaced here and around the nation. Fentanyl-spiked heroin becomes far more dangerous, selling under alluring names such as “Magic,” “Theraflu,” and “Bud Light.”

Whatever the problem, the community will manage it better with agencies that colaborate and communicate. As they face a drug epidemic that won’t go away anytime soon, area leaders ought to be commended for continuing to find new ways to protect this community by working together.






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