Mt. Lebanon forum features attorney general addressing opioid crisis
As Pennsylvania’s top law enforcement official, Attorney General Josh Shapiro makes it a priority to tackle what he believes to be the state’s No. 1 public safety and public health threat: the heroin opioid epidemic.
“My job is to go out and, in addressing this crisis, arrest people,” he said.
Since mid-January, his office had racked up 1,399 arrests of drug dealers – that’s 4.4 per day – as of Nov. 29, when he spoke at a substance abuse forum organized by state Rep. Dan Miller, D-Mt. Lebanon.
“I approach the job every day understanding that drug addiction is a disease, not a crime.” – Attorney General Josh Shapiro
“I believe that’s just part of the supply chain,” Shapiro contended. “Why? Because four out of every five people who approach that drug dealer on the street corner to buy heroin started down their path of addiction by taking a legal prescription drug, by taking an OxyContin or a Percocet.
“So why, then, if we’re looking to solve this epidemic, aren’t we bringing the pharmaceutical companies into that equation?” he continued, drawing a round of applause from his audience at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Mt. Lebanon. “That was one of the first questions I asked when I took office. And today, Pennsylvania is one of five lead states in the 41-state investigation into the opioid manufacturers and distributors here and across the United States.”
Harry Funk / The Almanac
Harry Funk / The Almanac
State Rep. Dan Miller, D-Mt. Lebanon, reads a question from the audience for Attorney General Josh Shapiro to answer.
The attorney general joined Miller and state Sen. Guy Reschenthaler, R-Jefferson Hills, in opening the “Challenges to Recovery” forum by outlining efforts that Pennsylvania’s elected officials are making toward mitigating a trend that claimed more than 64,000 American lives in 2016 alone.
Shapiro said his office also has seen a 50 percent increase in diversion arrests, in cases where legal prescription drugs are diverted for illegal purposes, and has helped shutdown supply pipelines, including one from New York City to Altoona that “dumped 1.5 million bags of heroin in our communities.”
“Yet it may surprise you to know that I fundamentally believe you simply can’t arrest your way out of this crisis,” he said. “I approach the job every day understanding that drug addiction is a disease, not a crime.
“Yes, we have to go lock up the dealers. We have to lock up those who are peddling poison, making our communities less safe, putting our communities at risk. We do that. We’ve also got to make sure that treatment is a part of the solution.”
Toward that goal, Shapiro is among 39 state attorneys general in a bipartisan coalition calling for Congress to address a problematic facet of a 52-year-old piece of legislation: the Institutions for Mental Diseases exclusion, which prohibits the use of federal Medicaid financing for care provided to most patients in mental health and substance abuse disorder treatment facilities larger than 16 beds.
The coalition’s proposed Road to Recovery Act would remove the exclusion for addiction treatment facilities only.
Harry Funk / The Almanac
Harry Funk / The Almanac
State Sen. Guy Reschenthaler, R-Jefferson Hills, is part of the bipartisan effort in Harrisburg tackling the opioid crisis.
Regarding the diversion of legal drugs, Shapiro said efforts are in place to provide continuing education for medical practitioners to encourage the prescribing of fewer opioids and for shorter durations.
“Many of them are not breaking the law,” he said, “but their practices are things that are dangerous when it comes to fueling this crisis.”
Shapiro also has challenged health insurers to step up efforts in paying for addiction treatment services while taking steps such as authorizing opioid prescriptions for briefer periods.
The forum also featured a series of sessions with more than a dozen panelists in the legal, medical, human services and drug addiction recovery fields providing insight to various facets of substance abuse.
Miller said he organized the event as a follow-up to local town hall meetings addressing the crisis.
“What we came out of them often with were a variety of questions that just were too specific to be addressed at that time,” he explained. “That’s why we said, ‘We’ve got to develop something deeper,’ and that’s why we went out with the idea of creating dialogue sessions on each one.”