PICKERINGTON CITY COUNCIL
CITY HALL, 100 LOCKVILLE ROAD
TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 16, 2010
COUNCIL WORK
SESSION
8:40 P.M.
1. CALL TO ORDER: Mayor O’Brien opened the Council Work Session at 8:40 P.M., with the
following council members present: Mrs.
Sanders, Mr. Fix, Mr. Blair, Mr. Sauer, Mrs. Hammond, Mr. Barletta, Mr.
Wisniewski, and Mayor O’Brien. Others
present were: Bill Vance, Lynda Yartin,
Chief Mike
Taylor, and
others.
2. SCHEDULED MATTERS:
A. Presentation by Mr.
Orman Hall, Fairfield County ADAMH. Mr.
Hall stated he was present this evening to specifically address a certain
aspect of addiction that has caught our state and our county by complete
surprise. He stated this is the problem
of opiate, or prescription pill addiction.
He stated he would like to touch upon three aspects of opiate addition;
first the scope of the problem, second the nature or causes of the problem, and
finally what can we do about it. Mr.
Hall stated in 1999 they identified four individuals in Fairfield County that attempted to access treatment for
opiates or heroin addition in Fairfield County. He
stated in May of 2010, 67 percent of everyone who attempted to get into
treatment for an addition problem in Fairfield County, including Pickerington, they were there because
they were addicted to either prescription pain killers or opiates or
heroin. He continued that in addition to
that the recovery center in Fairfield County was in a position where they had to turn
away 200 people a month. He stated Fairfield County also has four drug courts and 85 percent of
all persons who are in the criminal justice system in the drug court were there
because they were addicted to opiates.
Mr. Hall stated the ADMAH Board and the Sheriff’s office conducted
utilization review studies for 2003 and 2008.
He stated in 2003 they determined the incarceration costs for opiate
addicts was $350,000, but in 2008 the cost of incarcerating opiate addicts was
$2.5 million. Mr. Hall stated
prescription opiates are a huge problem in our county and we also have a
growing problem with heroin.
Mr.
Hall stated one of the reasons that opiates are so dangerous is because humans
have an almost unlimited ability to develop tolerance for opiates. He stated compared to alcohol, a late stage
alcoholic can drink the equivalent of a case of beer or the hard liquor
equivalent a day while an early stage alcoholic may consume a six-pack a day,
so there is about a four to one ratio in tolerance for people who are
progressing from an early stage to a later stage alcoholic. He stated, however, if you look at opiate
addiction an early stage opiate addict may use 30 milligrams a day, a $30 a day
habit, and a later stage opiate addict may be using 200 milligrams per day, so there
may be a 70 to one ratio as opposed to four to one.
Mr.
Hall stated this is largely a problem that is fueled by access to health
care. He stated he had participated in a
state-wide study, and surprisingly opiate/heroin addiction is a bigger problem
in suburban or rural communities than in our urban centers. He stated if you looked at the four small
counties of Fairfield, Athens, Hocking, and Perry, in 2009 there were
13.99 million doses of prescription pain killers that were dispensed by
physicians, dentists, and other health care practitioners. He stated if you took those 13.99 million
doses and distributed them equally to everyone that lives in these four
counties that would be 52 pills for everyone.
He continued that if you took all of the lesser known prescription
opiates and added those to the hydrocodone and oxycodone, the numbers rose to 20.1 million doses or 72
pills per person. He stated part of the
solution for this problem is to educate our citizens that opiates are dangerous
and highly addictive and are too frequently used for medical problems. Mrs. Sanders stated these numbers are
staggering and questioned if the physicians are being educated as well as the
citizens. Mr. Hall stated he is working
through Fairfield Medical Center in Lancaster, but part of the problem in Pickerington is
that there is such a widely dispersed health care system here. He stated some residents go to Columbus to access health and he has no ability from
a practical standpoint as to how you might influence practitioners in Franklin County. Mr. Hall
stated he did feel they were doing a pretty good job of getting this message
out in the southern part of the county through Fairfield Medical Center. Mr.
Hall stated in his opinion this is the most serious addiction crisis that our
state and potentially our country has ever experienced.
Mr.
Sauer questioned what the county was doing to address this issue and if there
were peer groups in the schools for the kids.
Mr. Hall stated there was probably a wide array of things to look into
that we are not doing yet. He stated the
first and least expensive step we can take is to make sure that residents of
our individual communities and our county are fully aware of how addictive
opiates are. Mr. Hall stated every other
year they conduct a survey of all tenth and twelfth grade students that are in
school that day, and what they know from the 2010 survey is that 56 percent of
students that took the survey live in households where someone has received a
prescription opiate from a doctor or a dentist in the past year. He stated, therefore, almost six out of ten
students have access to pharmaceutical grade heroin in their medicine
cabinets. Mr. Sauer further questioned
if there was anything in place for parental education on this issue. Mr. Hall stated they have done over 100
presentations around Fairfield
County and they are attempting to get the message
out. He stated they are also attempting
to get in touch with as many community organizations as they can, and if anyone
is aware of any group that would be open to a presentation just let him know
and they will get something scheduled.
Mr. Sauer stated he had also seen where some states require anyone
picking up prescriptions that are narcotic based or controlled substance must
be eighteen or older or accompanied by a parent or adult before they could
purchase it. Mr. Hall stated that was a
very interesting and creative option, and if Council could do something like that it could be a
really interesting approach. Mr.
Barletta stated perhaps we should think about scheduling a class of some sort
through our Parks and Recreation programs to help parents recognize the signs
of this addiction. Mr. Wisniewski stated
from what he understood a majority of the drugs that are on the streets are
from legal sources, legal prescriptions, so getting to the medical community
was a huge portion of this. Mr.
Wisniewski stated until the doctors stop writing scripts for everything he
didn’t know how this could be curbed.
Mr. Hall stated we do need to get to the practitioners and have them
change their patterns, but we also need to get to the parents. Mr. Hall inquired if it would be helpful for
him to put together a draft set of recommendations that Council could consider as there might be a few
things this body could do. Mr.
Wisniewski state he would like that, but he would also like to see a draft
letter of what Mr. Hall felt would be effective to get out to the community as
a whole to wake up people in the community to this issue. Mr. Hall stated we all need to be talking
about how serious opiate addiction is and how dangerous these drugs are. He stated in the State of Ohio in 2009 there were more people dying of
opiate addiction than there were from car crashes, this is the single largest
cause of accidental death in the State of Ohio. Mr.
Wisniewski asked if Mr. Hall could also draft a form letter that would be
coming from a patient that you could give to your doctor saying this is a
problem and please consider this when giving out a prescription. Mr. Hall stated that was a great idea and if
a doctor is not educating his patients they might not even know they had
opiates in their medicine cabinet. Mr.
Hall continued that having a letter that patients could take to their doctors
and dentists is a very interesting idea.
Mr. Fix stated he will be meeting with Mr. Hall in the weeks ahead and
if everyone agreed he would like to communicate back with Safety Committee on
the plans being put together to make this a community effort. He stated that would include things Council could do and the recommendations Mr. Hall
has been asked to bring back to Council. Mayor O’Brien stated he would also recommend
Mr. Hall contact the Township Trustees because we all need to work as a group
on this issue.
3. ADJOURNMENT. There being nothing further, Mayor O’Brien
closed the Council Work Session closed at 9:20 P.M., November
16, 2010.
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED:
______________________________
Lynda D. Yartin, Municipal Clerk
ATTEST:
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Mitch O’Brien, Mayor