CORONAVIRUS (COVID-19) RESOURCE CENTER Read More
Add To Favorites

Talk focuses on need to address opioid crisis as 'community endeavor'

The Evening News and The Tribune - 1/20/2022

Jan. 20—JEFFERSONVILLE — A recent talk explored the intersection of addiction, mental illness and homelessness as the opioid crisis continues to challenge the nation and the local area.

Sam Quinones, a journalist known for his reporting on the issue of addiction and the drug trade, was the keynote speaker for Clark County CARES' seventh annual Drug Facts Week. He spoke at a Thursday luncheon in Jeffersonville about ways to address the challenges of today's opioid epidemic.

Quinones is a former reporter for the Los Angeles Times, and he is the author of a number of critically-acclaimed nonfiction books, including "Dreamland: The True Tale of America's Opiate Epidemic," which was published in 2015.

In 2021, he published his latest book, "The Least of Us: True Tales of America and Hope in the Time of Fentanyl and Meth."

His new book discusses the "shredding" of "community bonds that had strengthened us as a nation," he said, and it examines the desire to have easy "one-size fits all" answers to extremely complicated problems.

At Thursday's talk, Quinones shared his observations from his reporting on the opioid crisis, including the changing dynamics in recent years. After he wrote the book "Dreamland," he was encouraged by his publisher to write another book on the drug crisis, and at first, he was not sure what direction to take.

His first book on the issue of opiate addiction focused on heroin and OxyContin, and as he traveled the country to talk about "Dreamland," he learned about the next phase of the opioid epidemic.

"I saw what came after heroin, and that led me to understand what I was watching," he said. "The more I got into it, the more I began to report on it and talk to people and saw that what I was watching was really the emergence of the synthetic era of drugs, really on the part of the Mexican drug trafficking world. They have shifted predominantly away from planted-based drugs toward synthetic drugs made without any plants involved, just chemicals."

Quinones' reporting examines the drug trade and the emergence of fentanyl. He said one of the issues is the prevalence of fentanyl fueled by the technology and the internet.

"In a time of COVID, when everyone is indoors and on their phones, well the smartphone becomes the street corner," Quinones said. "And the social media apps...a lot of this is fueling our drug overdose levels that we're seeing today. It's really scary amount of deaths happening because a lot of the people who are buying are young people who don't have any knowledge or tolerance of these drugs."

He also discussed the ways methamphetamine has become cheaper and more powerful, saying it is evolving in "scary manifestations here in Clark County and this whole region."

"[The drug] is more sinister — it's accompanied by rapid onset symptoms of mental illness that are scary to behold, and that is paranoia of a severe nature, florid hallucinations...a mental illness that very quickly alienates you from loved ones, anybody around you, so it very quickly leads to homelessness," he said. "My belief now is that the tent encampments we have across this country are very closely connected to the spread of methamphetamine all across the country."

It is also difficult to get people into treatment when they are struggling with methamphetamine addiction, which may result in people staying in tent encampments in the middle of winter instead of seeking shelter, Quinones said.

Quinones said the issue of homelessness cannot be attributed solely to high housing costs, and efforts to immediately move people from the streets into housing may not be effective if individuals are facing severe mental illness such as hallucinations and psychosis.

"I think there is almost a censoring attitude with regard to this topic, that nobody can really talk about the idea that people suffering from mental illness and drug addiction, and maybe that is a major reason, a major driving force behind what's going on in our streets when it comes to mental illness, homelessness, addiction — that they're all connected," he said.

His book features reporting from communities across the country, and even in places that are not facing rising housing costs, he has noticed homelessness and addiction to methamphetamine being a major issue.

To address these issues, he feels there is a need to "rethink how we do jail," including shifting away from the idea of jails as a place of "vegetation," and instead look to the opportunities to help those detoxing in jail to begin the recovery and rehabilitation process.

Quinones also feels drug court is "essential," and he believes communities "need to make use of law enforcement" in terms of addressing the issue.

"Decriminalizing drug use, in my opinion — and drug sales too — I think there was a time when maybe it might have worked, but I don't think it's a time when people would rather risk death in a tent than seek treatment for those very drugs," he said. "For me, it's a scary thing. I think we need to use in the same way drug court uses law enforcement — leverage to separate you from the brainwashing of these drugs."

"We need to use law enforcement as a way of pushing that," Quinones said. "You are never going to be ready in a tent...you're clearly not ready for treatment when you're in a tent and everyone's using meth — it's not just a realistic situation."

Quinones said he doesn't feel law enforcement should be used to send someone to prison who has been arrested for possessing a gram of heroin, fentanyl or meth, but rather that law enforcement should be used "to begin that sobriety" by separating people from those drugs.

He notes the value of these efforts toward recovery even if they are not immediately successful for everyone.

"We all stumble and fail — it's part of our life and how we deal with things, and I don't think it's a reason necessarily to stop doing something even if it doesn't work all the time or even a majority of the time," Quinones said.

He said there is a need to make these efforts a "community endeavor," and he emphasizes that while jails can play a role in helping with these issues, it's not a "panacea."

"The whole point of this book, the whole point of my focus is to say, there is no one answer to everything," Quinones said. "We tried that with opioid painkillers. The war on drugs did not fail to the extent that it did because we used law enforcement — it failed because we only used law enforcement. We tried to solve all pain with one pill. We know it didn't work."

Quinones said there are many small-scale solutions to the problem within communities, and they need to combine in a kind of "mosaic." The last part of his book is focused on stories of people engaged in often overlooked actions to address issues of addiction.

"Just showing up and doing that daily work and working with others — all these stories are essential," he said. "These are the types of things I wanted to write about."

___

(c)2022 The Evening News and The Tribune (Jeffersonville, Ind.)

Visit The Evening News and The Tribune (Jeffersonville, Ind.) at newsandtribune.com

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.