In response to a nationwide prescription-drug epidemic, a program called Don’t Get Me Started was created in January to combat the number of Ohioans who become addicted to prescription drugs.
The Ohio Department of Alcohol and Drug Addiction Services created the program after the state saw a 46 percent increase in prescription narcotics seized in 2011 than in the previous year.
Oman Hall, the department’s director, said ten times as many opiates were prescribed in 2010 as 1997, reflecting a national epidemic that must be combated.
Though the U.S. comprises only about 5 percent of the world’s population, its people use about 80 percent of the world’s oxycodone and 90 percent of the world’s Vicodin.
“We need to look for ways to have different balance in the way we prescribe opiates,” Hall said. “(There is) no doubt that we are the No. 1 opiate-prescribing society in the world.”
In Ohio, between six and seven pills were prescribed for each person in 1997. Thirteen years later, 67 pills were prescribed for each person in Ohio.
Don’t Get Me Started is an Ohio program, but it is funded by $250,000 in national funds through a Substance Abuse Mental Health Services Administration block grant.
Though Athens does not have the largest prescription drug problem in the state, Dr. Joe Gay, director of Health Recovery Services, which offers drug abuse recovery programs, identified several factors that make it a problem area in Ohio.
“Throughout the state of Ohio, particularly in Appalachian counties, there has been an increase in supply in both prescription opiates and heroin, (which is) also an opiate,” Gay said. “There are also a lot of stresses on the local population, and Athens has always been an area that has had a more permissive attitude towards drug use.”
Gay also explained that not every case of prescription drug abuse is serious, but some addictions can take more than a year to quell.
Stacey Frohnapfel-Hasson, the spokeswoman for Department of Alcohol and Drug Addiction Services, said people often underestimate the effects of prescription drugs because there is less of a “stigma” attached to these types of drugs as opposed to illegal drugs.
“Opiates aren’t like an antibiotic; you don’t take them until they’re done,” she said. “Chemically, opiates and heroin have the same active ingredient.”
Gay said doctors need to be better educated about prescribing prescription drugs and attributes overprescribing as a “huge factor” in the abuse of the medications.
“A computerized database can show if a client has had prescriptions recently,” he said. “Doctors don’t use that as much as they should.”
When the 88 Ohio sheriffs met, they all agreed that prescription drugs are a problem in their respective counties, said Athens County Sheriff Pat Kelly.
“This isn’t a problem just in Athens County, this is a nationwide problem,” Kelly said.
ld311710@ohiou.edu
