The Legislative Committee held hearings on Opiate Addiction
and Usage on April 29, 2015 at 2:25 pm.
A complete video of the testimony by various experts may be viewed
below.
Commissioners Gorman and Suffredin called the hearings to
try to understand opiate addiction to be
able to address cost and treatment issues for the Criminal Justice System and
HHS in Cook County.
Commissioners Butler, Boykin, Sims, and Garcia were also
present, although nearly everyone had left by the end of the meeting almost 2
hours later.
The hearings called many experts in Cook County and beyond
to help explain the patterns and origins of opiate addiction. Drug poisoning has overtaken motor vehicle
accidents for deaths in Illinois and around the nation.
Usage is well distributed all over suburban Cook County,
according to Dr. Mason, a specialist in treatment for non-Chicago Cook County
area hospitals.
Opiate addicts typically start using and abusing OTC (over
the counter) opioids like Vicodin, Tylenol 3, Oxycontin. When they can no longer justify a medical
excuse for obtaining OTC “legal” opioids, they switch to heroin.
Dr. Timothy Condon works with TASC as the Chief Science
Officer, and is at the National Institute of Drug Abuse: Drug abuse is a disease which is
treatable. It is a brain disease. Death rates from opiates in the Northeast and
Midwest are six times higher than in 2006-2007.
Nationally abuse is concentrated in non-Hispanic Whites and Black users. We now have tools to deal with opiate
addiction, which we did not in the past.
It doesn’t matter what is in the syringe, whether it is heroin or an
opiate prescription drug, the user is still an addict, and has to be treated.
Narcan or Naloxone is a powerful “new” drug that can revive
people who ordinarily would have died from an opiate overdose, but Narcan does
not treat the addiction.
The drug of choice for treating opiate addiction is Naltrexone. Unlike the imperfect Methadone “treatment”
that likewise created dependency, Naltrexone is an addiction agonist so it
blocks the euphoria that the opiate creates in the brain. Vivitrol is the time-release version of
Naltrexone.
Dr. Eka Jones is with the Sheriff’s office inside the
Women’s Justice program for mental health and drug treatment within Cook County
Jail. More than 50% of her enrollees
cited heroin as their drug of choice.
Drug treatment has to be tailored to meet individual needs.
Dr. Minella, the Head of Cermak Mental Health Clinic at the
Cook County Jail, has been there since 1991.
Everyone gets screened for physical and mental issues during Cook County
jail intake, and about 80% have substance histories. 12% actively use heroin of the intake
population at the jail. Of the 500
people in the Detox unit every month, about 80% are heroin users, committing
crimes to get heroin. The inmates are
very vulnerable when in detox and the issue is that they don’t stay long enough
to get off the substance. 25% leave
within 2 days, and 50% leave within 12 days.
6 weeks is considered the proper amount of time to get someone off of
opiate addiction.
Judge Charles Byrne from 26th Street courthouse
has the Drug Treatment Court. Addicts
have to be dealt with differently from young people who are caught for the
first time. 80% of addicts are heroin
“frequent fliers” where they have been in and out of jail and the penitentiary
between 5 and fifteen times. You have to
try to get them clean. Every $1 spent in
treatment saves $2 later. They are
typically using $200 to $300 in heroin each day. They need to be supervised in a sober
environment. If they complete the
treatment program, 85% of them stay out of the criminal justice system for at
least one year. 74% non-recitivism after
three years. They need jobs as well so
they can be able to make money. Everyone
who graduates from the program gets their case dismissed. Many groups now, including the CTA, have a
felon-hiring program. The drug treatment
program gets funded from Judge Evans’ budget.
Dr. Aix, a Stroger Emergency Room doctor and head of
Toxicology at Stroger, says we are in the middle of an opioid epidemic. It began to take off in 2000 when there was
over-prescription of opioid OTC drugs.
The opiate prescription drugs lure teens into experimentation.
At Stroger ER there are 5000 patients admitted for drug
overdoses in a year, with 20% of them repeat overdosers.
There needs to be an increase in Detox and addiction
facilities.
There are two pilot programs being tested by the State of
Illinois in Winnebago County and Madison County. Both use Vivitrol for long term easing off of
opiates, and both use community treatment and outreach to maintain the link to
support once the person has left jail.
They use Medicaid to treat people in jail.
Another speaker, Joel Johnson, at HRDI, Human Resources
Development Institute, said it was very hard to get Medicaid to pay for
Vivitrol treatment, even though it has proven successful.
Chief Scofield, Fire Chief in Orland Park, testified that
Orland Park went from 3 to 70 overdoses in the last ten years. The families are embarrassed and hide their
kids and the addiction from the public.
Chief Roberts, head of the Cook County Forest Preserve
police, lost his son to a heroin overdose in 2009. There were 7000 deaths in the nation in 2007,
43,000 in 2014. He is happy to see the
Cook County Board doing something proactive.
Dr. Dan Lustig of the Haymarket Center said that heroin
addicts need 6 or 7 treatments of Vivitrol before “freedom from opiates” can
take hold.
Sally Thorin, Executive Director of Gateway Foundations,
says there are three key parts of treatment.
Proper diagnosis, therapeutic mindfulness, and Vivitrol treatment.
Respectfully submitted by Amy Little
