Opiate-related legislative efforts
A bipartisan group of bills has been working its way through the Ohio House of Representatives since last fall. Together, the bills are intended to stop more people from becoming addicted by decreasing the amount of prescription painkillers being prescribed in the medical system; keep addicts alive while preventing them from diverting more pills out of the medical system; and get people effective treatment so they can recover.
• House Bill 314 – Prevents opioids from being prescribed to minors without their parents’ consent
• House Bill 315 – Requires hospitals to report the number of newborns dependent on opioids
• House Bill 332 – Creates higher standards of care requirements for physicians treating chronic, non-cancer pain
• House Bill 341 – Requires all prescribing physicians, including veterinarians, to check the OARRS system before giving a prescription for an opioid
• House Bill 359 – Requires a consumer fact sheet to be given to patients receiving an opioid prescription
• House Bill 363 – Creates a 9-1-1 Good Samaritan law that exempts someone from prosecution for minor possession if they attempt to save the life of someone who is overdosing
• House Bill 366 – Requires hospice organizations to appoint one person to keep track of medications used, do pill counts, lock up unused medication, and dispose of medication after it’s no longer needed
• House Bill 367 – Requires prescription pill addiction and the linkage to heroin be taught as part of the health class curriculum in our schools
• House Bill 369 – Requires each county to have the full spectrum of integrated opioid addiction recovery treatment and recovery housing. It also requires insurance and Medicaid to pay for opioid recovery treatment, and provides funding for specialty drug courts.
• House Bill 378 – Requires drug recovery treatment to accompany prescriptions for medication assisted treatment drugs
• House Bill 381 – Requires an individual to show their driver’s license or photo identification when picking up an opioid prescription
• Rep. Barbara Sears plans to introduce a bill requiring that 30-day opioid prescriptions for acute pain be filled in 10-day increments
More online: View our interactive page of commonly abused prescription drugs at MyDaytonDailyNews.com/local.
Unmatched coverage
The Dayton Daily News has written for the past year about the prescription drug and heroin problem in the region. In October, our Prescription for Pain series led to several bill being introduced in the Ohio House. Count on us to continue our in-depth coverage on this issue.
More online: View our interactive page of commonly abused prescription drugs at MyDaytonDailyNews.com/local.
Unmatched coverage
The Dayton Daily News has written for the past year about the prescription drug and heroin problem in the region. In October, our Prescription for Pain series led to several bill being introduced in the Ohio House. Count on us to continue our in-depth coverage on this issue.
Ohio’s opiate crisis that led to an estimated 900 heroin overdose deaths in 2013 has prompted more than a dozen proposed bills at the state level and spurred the Attorney General’s Office to form a heroin unit.
“It’s of epidemic proportions throughout the state,” said Ohio House Rep. Fred Strahorn, D-Dayton, who sits on the Prescription Drug Addiction and Healthcare Reform Study committees. “What we’ve found with this problem is it does not discriminate against anyone.”
Ohio House Rep. Robert Sprague, R-Findlay, chairs the prescription drug addiction committee and said he hopes legislation that addresses treatment, reporting, disposal of old prescriptions and education can be fully passed perhaps as early as this fall.
“We’re going to take as long as it takes to get it done,” Sprague said. “We’d like for it to occur quickly, obviously, because we think that it’s important. People are desperate. They need help. They need the treatment bills. We don’t want more people to become addicted.”
Sprague said some of the proposed legislation was sparked by a multi-day series produced by the Dayton Daily News in October about the area’s prescription opiates and heroin problems.
“The politicians definitely sit up and take notice when their constituents say this is a problem and you need to take care of it,” Sprague said.
Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine said the heroin epidemic is a problem in every Ohio county.
“Heroin is cheap, it’s plentiful, it’s being brought up almost exclusively from Mexico by drug cartels down there,” DeWine said. “It’s a huge, huge problem. For every one person who dies of it, there’s other ones whose lives are ruined and whose families are broken up. It’s a very, very sad thing.”
The death of popular actor Philip Seymour Hoffman last week from an apparent overdose also has put the heroin crisis in the national spotlight.
Dr. Gary Leroy, the associate dean for student affairs and admission at Wright State University’s Boonshoft School of Medicine, cautioned lawmakers against trying to do too much without input from physicians.
“I personally think it’s a problem whose time is long overdue for us to recognize and actively do something about,” Leroy said. “The concern of the medical community is that we don’t want legislators practicing medicine through legislation. You can tie the hands of the medical community by trying to legislate this thing away.”
Sprague admitted legislators are wary of over-reaching.
“All the bills that are changing the medical system and standards of care, we feel all this is important and it needs to be put into place as soon as possible. On the one hand there’s tremendous urgency,” Sprague said.
Montgomery County illustrates the increasing problem of those addicted by opiates and heroin.
Heroin-related deaths in the county recorded by the Montgomery County Coroner’s Office nearly doubled from 50 in 2011 to 93 in 2012. That number will be even higher for 2013 when the final number of deaths are tallied. There were 105 heroin-related deaths in the first 10 months of the year.
Of those, 46 were in Dayton, eight in Miamisburg, seven in Riverside, six apiece in Harrison Twp. and Moraine and five each in Miami Twp. and Huber Heights.
Those 105 overdose deaths through October don’t include a spike of overdose deaths in the Dayton area in the last two months of the year that included heroin laced with fentanyl, a powerful pain medication that Montgomery County Coroner Dr. Kent Harshbarger said is 100 times stronger than heroin.
“We’ve seen (fentanyl), first on the street, and now it’s reflecting in the deceased cases we’re dealing with,” Harshbarger said. “If you’re a current user, what’s on the street is much more powerful. If you’re a new user and don’t have tolerance, this current available product is much more dangerous than what we’ve seen.”
An estimated 904 died of heroin overdoses in 2013, compared to 725 in 2012, according to the Ohio Attorney General’s Office.
The drug is causing problems for law enforcement and the judicial system. The number of indicted heroin-related cases in Montgomery County Common Pleas Court also jumped from 356 in 2011 to 412 in 2012 to 688 in 2013.
In announcing a new heroin unit to combat the escalating opiate problem, DeWine recently said the organization would connect local law enforcement with the Bureau of Criminal Investigation, the Ohio Organized Crime Investigation, the Special Prosecutions Section and Drug Abuse Awareness Outreach staff.
“The goal is to get higher up on the food chain of the dealers,” DeWine said. “I’m really convinced we can’t arrest our way out of this problem. What we really need is more community groups who are focused on education and prevention. What we’ve seen is the counties that have been relatively successful in fighting back against prescription drug deaths and heroin drug deaths have been counties where the local community has really formed citizen groups led by recovering addicts or family members of someone who has died.”
DeWine said the Ohio Peace Officer Training Academy will offer a new course — The Heroin Epidemic: Recognition and Investigation. The courses focus on basic narcotics, patrol drug operations, drug identification and field testing, basic drug investigation and advanced drug investigation.
Strahorn said a comprehensive approach is needed from the medical, law enforcement and treatment communities.
“Addiction is just such a powerful problem,” Strahorn said. “If the resources aren’t there to treat people, get them off an addiction and keep them off an addiction, and educate people in general … if you don’t do those things, it’s really a hard thing to chase.”
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