Northern Kentucky makes strides in fight against heroin

President and CEO of the Northern Kentucky Chamber of Commerce Trey Grayson has helped lead the fight against his region’s heroin epidemic, earning praise from the director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy.

The Northern Kentucky Region, with more than 400,000 residents, saw heroin overdose admissions to area emergency rooms triple from 2011 to 2014 while the region’s acute Hepatitis C infection rate was 24 times the national rate, Grayson wrote in a recent Ripon Forum. A recent survey, Grayson wrote, showed that 36 percent of respondents in the region said that they know someone who has experienced problems with heroin while Kenton County Jailer Terry Carl estimated that as many as 80 percent of those in his jail were there on heroin-related offenses.

“Heroin is incredibly addictive and currently very cheap and plentiful, thus posing a problem for any town in America,” Grayson wrote. “Our region is particularly vulnerable given our population size; proximity to Chicago and Detroit, which serve as import hubs for the drug; and the lowest per capita allocation of federal and state funds for treatment of substance use and mental health disorders among Kentucky regions.

“We estimated that Kentucky’s price tag for heroin, alcohol and other drug abuse totaled more than $6 billion annually when considering crime, medical care, workplace accidents, and lost wages.”

Because of both the human and financial toll of the epidemic, the Chamber made passing a comprehensive heroin plan in 2014 one of its top legislative priorities, which it continued to stress in 2015.

As a result of its push, Kentucky is among the few states sharing a $2.5 million federal grant for the Heroin Response Strategy program that aims to aid federal, state and local authorities in coordinating drug enforcement operations, supporting prevention efforts, and improving public health and safety.

“We worked to bring together all of the diverse parties — representatives from government, law enforcement, treatment, advocacy and business communities — in an umbrella organization, the Northern Kentucky Heroin Impact Response Team, which issued a plan of action in November 2013,” Grayson said. “That plan is centered on four major strategies that are enveloped within a larger context of reducing the supply of drugs on the street and advocating for legislative enhancements that support the initiative: treatment, prevention, support and protection.”

While the state legislature failed to pass the plan in 2014, the comprehensive Senate Bill 192 passed the state Senate 34-4 and the House unanimously in 2015. S.B. 192 includes a Good Samaritan law giving immunity to those reporting an overdose to authorities and increases the availability of the overdose reversing drug Naloxone. Additionally, the bill increases penalties for trafficking across state lines.

S.B. 192 also provides $10 million in funding during the first year and $24 million thereafter to improve substance abuse programs, speed up prosecutions and hire more social workers.

“Our community still has a tough battle in front of us,” Grayson said. “The disease of addiction, specifically heroin, is a tough opponent. The past few years have shown that when we come together, we can start to make a difference. But this battle is a long way from being over. In fact, in many ways, it has only just begun. We hope that other communities can benefit from our experience and get a jump start on this epidemic before it arrives, as it surely will.”