Southern Indiana leaders welcome national focus on opioid epidemic

Trump outlined his plan during a speech in New Hampshire on Monday. He touched on everything from tougher penalties for drug traffickers, litigation against pharmaceutical companies and Medicaid waivers for addiction treatment services.

He also pushed for more education, including launching a national ad campaign to educate Americans on the dangers of opioid abuse. The Rev. Nancy Woodworth-Hill, a pastor at St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Jeffersonville and a facilitator for the community-based addiction support group Clark County CARES, said she supports more education efforts, but added that it needs to be a multi-pronged approach.

"It's a nice start, but I don't think a 15-second commercial is near enough to get a person to understand the complexity [of opioid addiction]," she said.

Woodworth-Hill suggested requiring curriculums in schools to expand education efforts. It's an idea echoed by Cile Blau, a former elected judge and now a senior judge in Clark County. Blau, who has presided over countless drug cases, said she'd like to see addiction education at the grade-school level and continued throughout high school.

She's also skeptical about how much of an impact a nationwide ad campaign could have, noting that face-to-face education would be much more fruitful. If experts, professionals and even recovering addicts could talk to students, those students could engage and ask questions, she said.

Floyd County Sheriff Frank Loop said it's important that kids aren't just told to say "no" to drugs, but are told why. He also said mixed messages have to be cleared up. For example, he said, some states have legalized marijuana, making it confusing when telling kids that drugs are dangerous.

"It has to be about drug abuse, not a particular drug. And we can't send a mixed message to our kids and say, 'Hey, marijuana is okay but this is not,' " he said. "That's just not right. It's no wonder the kids are confused."

POLICING THE PROBLEM

Trump also proposed tougher penalties for drug traffickers, including implementing the death penalty in certain cases. Blau said the problem is that larger drug traffickers often escape law enforcement. Instead, it's the smaller dealers or drug "mules" that get caught up in the criminal justice system.

"The big guys who deserve to have their lives taken away either forever in prison or by other means, we don't get anywhere near them," she said, adding that it's worthwhile to take a look at the laws already on the books and figure out how to better enforce them.

Woodworth-Hill said she'd rather the focus be on treating addiction as a medical issue rather than a criminal one.

"If we focus on it as an illegal activity, we will find more illegal activity. If we focus on it as a medical issue, an issue that requires skilled intervention and lots of work on the part of the individual and support from a community, we will get greater health," she said.

Loop also wants to see the addiction epidemic treated like a medical issue, saying the war on drugs has been a losing battle since it began.

A lot of addiction is a disease, and I think we need to get our medical issues straightened out in this country and start treating people with that disease," he said.

As for tougher penalties, Loop went back to the problem of mixed messaging. Indiana recently saw some movement in the Legislature to impose tougher penalties for drug dealing resulting in death. But it was just a few years ago, Loop said, that Indiana lowered its mandatory minimums for certain drug offenses and mandated lower-level drug offenders be kept out of prison and in community corrections programs.

SENDING A MESSAGE

Whether or not they agree with all of Trump's plans of attack, the three local leaders agreed that putting the opioid crisis on the national stage is a positive thing.

"I think it's absolutely a good thing because communities aren't always aware of all of the costs [of the opioid crisis]," Woodworth-Hill said, referring to the cost on families, jails and the treatment system.

"So anything that can bring this to people's mind, I'm hopeful about. So I really am glad that this is being talked about."

Blau said it's good to explore all the heavy-duty tools available to fight the epidemic, but she doesn't want people to forget about the smaller initiatives, like needle exchanges. While exchanges may not be putting an end to addiction, they do address the spread of disease and offer a pathway to treatment.

"Education, prevention and treatment go high in my book," she said.