Menu
Opioids crisis dominates Legislative Update discussion
While the opioids crisis has hit home all across Indiana, it even managed to thrust its ugly influence into the sanctity of one state legislator’s domicile.
The sheer prevalence of the drug problem has compelled District 37 State Sen. Rodric Bray (R-Martinsville) to launch a pre-emptive strike in his own living room, he told the crowd at the second Legislative Update program of the 2018 session Indiana General Assembly Saturday at the Putnam County Farm Bureau Insurance Office in Greencastle.
Carrying on a conversation with his 12-year-old son about the dangers of drugs and the awful consequences of opioids, Bray was greeted unsurprisingly with the ever-popular pre-teen eye roll.
“I thought, ‘I can’t believe I’m having this conversation with a 12-year-old,’” Bray continued, sharing that personal perspective with 54 attendees to the monthly Legislature Update, “but I know somebody at his school knows what it (an opioid) is.”
Somebody else might know where to get the drugs. And somebody’s parents are possibly even using opioids such as heroin. So the legislator reasoned it’s never too soon to inform his son about the perils of such drug use.
Serious opioid conversation dominated discussion at the update session Saturday as Bray called the problem”rampant and growing.”
“It invades every aspect of our community,” the senator added. “It’s not just an inner-city problem.
“It knows no economic tier and no geographic area is safe.”
In fact, Bray said a woman in his Sunday school class -- the kind of person one would never expect to ever get involved in drugs -- recently got tangled up in the opioid crisis.
That’s why the legislature is hard at work trying to solve the problem.
Senate Bill 221, Sens. Bray and John Crane (R-Avon) noted, has been introduced to help combat the crisis in Indiana. The bill would require doctors to check Indiana’s Prescription Drug Monitoring Program (INSPECT) when prescribing opioids (currently it is an option for doctors to register and search with INSPECT). It allows a doctor to search the history of a patient’s prescriptions to make sure he or she hasn’t been “doctor shopping” for multiple prescriptions, using the prescriptions at a higher rate than prescribed or at risk for overdosing.
Meanwhile, a number of other bills are aimed at fighting the opioid problem in different ways, Bray said.
“I think if we solve this, we solve a problem with a number of things connected,” he said.
For example, it ties in with child issues. Indiana has twice as many children in its CHINS (Children in Need of Services) system as states many times bigger than Indiana, Bray reported. It’s become such an issue, he added, that the Department of Child Services “has blown through its two-year budget within eight months.”
“Doing something about the opioid crisis is very important,” agreed veteran local child services expert Ann Newton, noting that Putnam County has seen more children removed from homes than ever before during the current climate of drug use.
Bray and Crane also noted that HB 1006 expands the amount of grant money available to probation departments for people to get treatment for opioid addictions.
“You’re probably going to fail seven times trying to get off heroin or one of these other drugs,” Bray suggested, noting that an addict has to be treated a minimum of six months for the treatment to take hold.
“And they’re not in jail long enough for that to happen,” he said, hinting perhaps that longer jail sentences might be fruitful.
Crane brought up another point: The addict must want to be treated.
“Whether it’s a drug addiction or a diet,” Crane said, “I have to want to do it.
“It’s a massive issue,” he continued. “Just keep persevering is all we can do.”
Crane assured that the legal system, schools and even politicians are all trying to solve or at least slow the opioid problem.
“It’s becoming a big snowball,” the senator said, “and it’s rolling downhill.”
Presently, statistics from Greencastle City Police indicate methamphetamine use continues to be more of a problem within the city than opioids. In fact, only one opioid overdose from heroin has been reported in Greencastle over the last couple years, police said.
Bray said a recent conversation with Putnam Circuit Court Judge Matt Headley corroborates that scenario locally, while local attorney Scott Bieniek, in the audience on Saturday, said he too is seeing meth, not opioids, involved in most criminal cases.
“We’ve got to keep an eye on the whole thing,” Crane commented, suggesting that the more meth use is suppressed, the more opioid use might take off -- and vice versa -- in a double-edged drug dilemma.