It is going to take a group effort to tackle the complex drug abuse issue in Henry County.
HOPE Initiative hosted a forum this week to let community members hear from experts in the education, judicial and medical fields about the challenges drugs bring to their parts of society.
Eric Creviston, superintendent of Blue River Valley Schools, spoke about how social issues like habitual drug use in the home and absentee parents are affecting Henry County children and their ability to get a good education.
Henry County Commissioner Butch Baker, who previously served as the county’s sheriff, has seen the drug problem from the perspective of both a law enforcement officer and, now, a lawmaker.
Carolyn Slagle is a clinical nurse specialist and a licensed clinical addiction counselor. She spoke about the effects that drugs, from alcohol to meth, have on the body.
People attending the Thursday night meeting broke into groups and met with each of the speakers for 20 minutes. Afterward, the group came back together and discussed interesting points they had learned.
The ultimate goal of the meeting was to find a common vocabulary in the conversation about substance abuse in Henry County. It was also an opportunity for different social groups to network and begin a concerted effort to overcome the deep issues that cause people to want to stay high all day.
A repeated comment during the night was that society has changed over the last generation, especially as high-paying factory jobs have left the area and families have had to find a new normal.
Creviston sees this a lot when kids are getting dropped off at school in the mornings.
“It’s not ‘parent drop-off’ anymore,” he said. “A lot of kids are being raised by grandparents.”
Some parents are in jail on drug-related charges. Other parents simply don’t have the skills to take care of their children, so they have other family members raise their kids, Creviston said.
New Castle High School Associate Principal Kenon Gray agreed.
“The demographic has changed dramatically over the past 20 years,” Gray said.
Creviston relayed a story about a particular student who had been transferred in and out of the BRV school system multiple times over the past two years because the student’s family life was so unstable.
Creviston said that child is going to have to work harder than his or her classmates just to keep his or her grades up and has no leeway when it comes to graduation.
“Kids grow up thinking this is normal,” Creviston said.
Jim Cohen, a family support specialist from Centerstone, told his group that parents in their 40s and 50s are teaching their kids that it is okay to live in squaller or that its fine to be drunk or messed up on pills.
“What are they modeling for their kids?” Cohen asked. “I think a lot of people don’t realize how some of our neighbors live.”
Creviston pointed out that folks his age used to sneak a secret cigarette when they were kids, because their parents smoked. That’s how you “proved” you were grown up, he said.
Like Cohen, Creviston worries about the “grown-up” behavior that some children and teens are seeing at home and are trying to emulate.
When groups got to Slagle’s table, they learned about the different aspects of addiction.
Slagle said addiction – whether it is to prescription medicine or liquor – breaks down the physical, emotional, spiritual and social parts of the addict’s life.
It also eats away at their families and other relationships, she said.
Slagle suggested that the community needs to find a “shotgun” approach to address all the different factors of substance abuse and addiction.
She pointed out that communities all around Indiana are in the same situation as Henry County. They are spending millions of dollars in taxpayer money to pay for jails, 911 emergency calls, hospital bills and family and social services because of drug abuse.
Slagle said communities could, instead, start putting that tax money and those resources to use treating addiction and the situations that promote drug use in the first place.
“It goes back to the ‘it takes a village’ mentality that we’ve gotten away from,” Cohen said.
Baker has had a lot of first-hand experience with illegal drug usage in Henry County. When he was a street cop in the 1980s, Baker helped start the local drug task force.
Baker believes that people sold drugs in the past mostly to make money. As an undercover narcotics officer, he bought a lot of marijuana and prescription pills.
Today, he blames pharmaceutical companies and irresponsible doctors for pushing too many addictive pain medicines on their patients. By flooding cities and towns with hundreds and thousands of pills that people are highly addicted to, the healthcare providers have helped created the current opioid epidemic, Baker said.
Baker estimated that 90 percent of the people currently housed in Henry County Jail are there because of drugs or alcohol abuse.
Baker has said in the past that Henry County can’t “jail its way out” of the local drug problem.
Instead, he subscribes to a three-pronged approach of: Enforcement, Education and Treatment.
Baker likes the progress that the drug task force and Pro-Active Criminal Enforcement (PACE) Team have made trying to keep drugs off the streets.
He thinks there needs to be more conversation and education about drug abuse in Henry County. Most importantly, Baker thinks the community needs more treatment options.
“Treatment includes mental health,” Baker said, “and that’s probably where we are lacking.”
Cohen shared that Centerstone has started providing adult substance abuse services in Henry County.
“The ability to deal with life stress has a lot to do with addiction,” Cohen said.
Cohen said people coming out of Henry County Jail need a support system to help keep them from going back to the drugs. They need help learning and using basic life skills, he said.
After the individual conversations, the larger group listed several needs of the community.
A big one was the need to create some sort of effective support system for folks coming out of jail. Henry County Judge Kit Crane is working on setting up a special drug court specifically to connect offenders with the services that can help them, Baker said.
“It’s time to put boots on ground and start using this collective knowledge,” HOPE Co-Director Jimmy Kidd said.