Council looks to prevention, treatment

The 21-member council was asked to coordinate the state’s handling of to crisis by beefing up coordination among agencies and groups within state and local government.

One of the 21 members is Lamoille County Sheriff Roger Marcoux, who represents the Vermont Sheriff’s Association.

The group has met formally only twice, but two subcommittees — one for treatment and recovery, the other for law enforcement and prevention — have met four or five times each, working toward an October deadline for making recommendations to the governor.

That October report will give Scott and his cabinet time to decide on the plan they’d like bring to the Legislature in January.

Last Thursday, Marcoux and Tom Anderson, commissioner of public safety, met with the police chief in Manchester, N.H., to find out what his department does to prevent and enforce opioid abuse.

In meeting with various law enforcement agencies in and around Vermont, “we are trying to figure out how not to reinvent the wheel,” Marcoux said.

“I believe that you should start with the earliest stage in school on prevention, and how to avoid going down that route, but it’s tough when, as a state, we are not on the same page even, when it comes to marijuana,” the sheriff said.

Marcoux said he’s all about taking a common-sense approach, trying to figure out what will be most effective.

Fortunately in Lamoille County, nobody who asks for drug treatment has to be put on a waiting list.

The problem: “Around 80 percent of addicts are not asking for treatment,” Marcoux said. “The state estimates that roughly 20,000 people in Vermont are addicted to opioids, and four out of five of those cases started with prescription drug abuse.

“We have a messaging problem.”

If the state wants a successful prevention and recovery campaign, Marcoux suggests it look to the tobacco and no-smoking ads. Everyone has seen the commercial about the man who lost half his jaw because of chewing tobacco, he said. That’s a powerful message, and the advertising should be just as intense when it comes to opioid abuse.

“It’s opioids now, but who knows what people will be addicted to 10 years from now?” Marcoux said.

It’s hard to say exactly how many drug cases the state deals with per year, says Lamoille County State’s Attorney Paul Finnerty.

“I don’t see many possession or distribution cases,” he said, “but what I do see is a lot of people who were in treatment and relapsed. Or we see crimes that might be related” to drug abuse — burglaries or thefts that get money to buy drugs.

Usually, a person charged with opioid possession for the first time is sent to court diversion, with the goal of getting the offender into treatment.

And, if the person goes to diversion and is successful, the criminal record is expunged. That drug case, essentially, no longer exists. So how do you know who’s a repeat offender?

In some cases, people are revived after an opioid overdose, and even though they were in possession of an illegal drug, they are getting medical treatment and immune from prosecution at that point.

“This year, I know there have been at least a few cases. It’s not like they’re every week, but rather a trickle,” Finnerty said. “I think we do a good job of getting people into treatment without clogging up the court system.”

Marcoux believes that the state should send people into treatment only if they are ready to commit to treatment, because otherwise it’s a waste of time. They often relapse.

On the other hand, he has heard people say that, if they hadn’t been pushed back into treatment three or four times, they wouldn’t have been able to get clean. It’s hard to find the right balance.

Prevention is a better way to stop the opioid epidemic in Vermont, and eventually, Marcoux would like school resource officers to receive specialized training and become more involved in education.

“Resource officers are not meant to be just bodyguards in school, and one problem in high school is that (students) are only required to take one semester of health education. Prevention and education needs to start before high school,” Marcoux said.