Nation’s opioid crisis continues to demand attention, Latta states at hearing

U.S. Rep. Bob Latta (R-OH) helped lead a Tuesday subcommittee hearing entitled A Public Health Emergency: State Efforts to Curb the Opioid Crisis, which delved into ongoing work to quell the nation’s rates of overdoses and related deaths.

“Although there has been increased focus to combat the heroin and opioid crisis over the past few years, we are still losing over 10 Ohioans every single day to substance abuse,” Rep. Latta said during the Jan. 14 U.S. House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations hearing. “This crisis deserves our continued attention until lives are no longer lost because one life lost to substance abuse is one too many.”

Rep. Latta also discussed related legislation he authored, the Indexing Narcotics, Fentanyl and Opioids (INFO) Act, which became a central part of the SUPPORT Act, H.R. 6, that was signed into law in 2018.

“Last Congress, I authored the INFO Act in order to create a one-stop-shop dashboard to help states learn about the various substance use disorder funding opportunities available across the federal government so they can better serve the people in their communities who are struggling with substance abuse,” Rep. Latta said.

The congressman noted that “a record amount of resources are being made available to prevent addiction, provide treatment, and combat this crisis, but we need to ensure that communities, like those in northwest and west central Ohio, can access these funds.”

While prescription opioid overdose deaths decreased in Ohio by almost 28 percent from 2011 to 2017, overdose rates remain high, according to the Ohio Department of Health, which reported that prescription opioid-related overdose deaths accounted for 523 of Ohio’s total 4,854 unintentional overdose deaths in 2017, compared to 564 of 4,050 total deaths in 2016.

Rep. Latta’s office cited information from the National Institute on Drug Abuse that found Ohio had the second-highest rate in the country of drug-related overdose deaths involving opioids in 2017.