By Bill Benedict
EDITOR’S NOTE — Bill Benedict, the author of this guest column, is the sheriff of Clallam County. He can be contacted at 360-417-2464 or by email at bbenedict@co.clallam.wa.us.
PRESCRIPTION DRUG ABUSE is a huge problem on the North Olympic Peninsula.
Unfortunately, Clallam County has been at or near the top of Washington state counties in per capita unintentional opiate overdoses or deaths over the past 10 years.
Almost all of these tragic mishaps involve illegally procured opiates in the form of heroin or pills.
I think a good way to approach the problem is look at it in terms of supply and demand.
Supply is primarily a regulatory and law enforcement issue.
That’s what the Olympic Peninsula Narcotics Enforcement Team — OPNET — under sponsorship of the Clallam County Sheriff’s Office, Port Angeles Police Department and the Washington State Patrol does to find and arrest drug dealers.
OPNET does not actively seek out or arrest illegal drug users – only drug dealers, and large-scale dealers at that.
County law enforcement agencies – county, cities, and tribal – have worked together to try and stem the illegal sales and distribution of
prescription opiates through rigorous enforcement of drug trafficking laws and offering safe disposal for all unwanted prescription medications.
Drop-off points at the Clallam County Sheriff’s Office (360-417-2262), Jim’s Pharmacy in Port Angeles (360-452-4200), Port Angeles Police Department (3260-452-4545), Sequim Police Department (360-683-7227) and Forks Police Department (360-374-2223) have taken thousands of pounds of unwanted prescription drugs, including opiates, and safely disposed of them.
In Jefferson County, the Sheriff’s Office (360-385-3831) and Port Townsend Police Department (360-385-2322) oversee successful drug take-back programs.
The demand side of the drug problem is by far the most difficult and complex.
Without demand — people wanting to use opiate drugs for non-medical purposes — there would be no drug problem.
But I also do not see how arresting illegal drug users to protect them from themselves accomplishes anything other than racking up huge financial costs and social disruption.
Inappropriate and illegal use of opiates is, in my opinion, a public health and cultural problem that we can’t arrest our way out of.
Why do so many of our youth want to use opiates on a regular basis?
Why can’t our educational system and culture do a better job in discouraging “recreational” opiate use?
Additionally, a major challenge of fighting prescription abuse is making sure people with real pain can access the medicines they need while preventing others from using them illegally.
Fortunately, there are new technologies to address the demand side challenge, reducing the risk of misuse and allowing physicians more certainty that when they prescribe pain medication it won’t be abused.
These technologies, called Abuse-Deterrent Formulations, or ADF, make it difficult to crush pain medications so they can be abused (i.e.,
smoked or nasally ingested).
There is no single strategy, and each is a little different.
This helps ensure that even if abusers can find a way around one strategy, there can’t find a way around them all.
This is a great step forward in improving access to care while reducing the threat of abuse.
State and private insurers should ensure these technologies are available; making sure coverage is an option.
I fully support the use of ADF technologies for opiate pain medication.
Addressing prescription drug abuse means addressing both supply and demand and doing that in a way that doesn’t make it more difficult for those with legitimate pain to access medicines.
While there is more to be done here in Clallam County, we are taking the lead on fighting the supply.
There is no one magic solution, however, and all of our efforts in combination, focusing on supply and demand, are part of addressing this problem.
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This guest column appeared in the print edition of the Feb. 11 Peninsula Daily News.
