State lawmakers seek public’s input in advance of Sept. 17 opioid town hall

By Matt Ward

How have you been impacted by the opioid crisis?
How do you think newly implemented interventions are working?
Does additional action need to be taken to help address the opioid crisis?
Who wants to know?
The Utah Legislature wants to know. And members of the Legislature’s Social Services Appropriations Subcommittee are the ones asking.
Members of this body, senators and representatives representing areas across Utah, will join a host of other concerned local, state and federal officials on Sept. 17 at the Carbon County Events Center from 6-9 p.m. for a town hall style conversation about how the opioid epidemic is affecting Castle Country residents.
Carbon and Emery counties are often cited as miniature ground zeros for the opioid epidemic in Utah, accounting for higher than average percapita rates of overdose deaths and opioid-related suicides.
Last legislative session, lawmakers approved two new full-time employees from the state’s Department of Human Services to work in Carbon County as addiction and suicide prevention specialists. An additional $125,000 was also earmarked for medically-assisted substance abuse treatment, said State Rep. Paul Ray, who represents District 13 and is House chair for the subcommittee.
“I was in a meeting and I found out that Carbon County was a red flag county, that it was one of the top counties in the country for opioid suicide issues,” Ray said. “I called down there to Carbon County and said hey I need to know what you’re concerned about, we want to help.”
Karen Dolan, executive director of Four Corners Community Behavioral Health in Carbon County happened to be at the capitol that day and met with Ray.
“I said what can we do to help you? I don’t want to come in and dictate what has to be done because I don’t know. But I do want to know what’s going on so we can be of assistance,” Ray recalled.
First he said he heard that local social services agencies needed more money to hire personnel. Then he was informed about the success locally of medically-assisted treatment for addiction, which includes supplying addicts with medications such as Vivitrol as well as other naltrexone and methadone-based regimens.
The lawmaker credited quick action by Utah House Speaker Greg Hughes at the end of the 2018 session for making the additional resources available to local caregivers.
Now Ray and other members of the subcommittee would like to see if the assistance has helped. He said he and other lawmakers are working toward a model for rural Utah that can serve other rural communities across the country.
“What I’m hoping we can do, by working collaboratively with everybody, is come up with a model, a national model that we can go out to other states and say this is how we did that,” Ray said.
Ray and other lawmakers’ ambitions are not misplaced. Utah joined seven other states to see decreases in Opioid-related deaths in 2017.
“We were down 12 percent and the national average was up 10 percent. To me that’s really huge. We are definitely going in the right direction,” he said.
Local State Rep. Christine Watkins, District 69, says she was thrilled to learn of the additional resources granted to this hard hit area.
“I’ve worked with Rep. Ray over the years. He came to me and said he didn’t realize the struggles we were having down here. Because he’s a chair, which is how important seniority is, he was able to get that funding for us,” she said.
Watkins says underfunding of rural programs is a constant battle she fights at the capitol.
“One of the problems we have in rural Utah, and really it’s anywhere, but especially because we’re so remote, is underfunding. We know we need things. But it takes people, boots on the ground, it takes resources. These people need to have things available to us to help us,” she said.
Ray says part of the mission on Sept. 17 will be to hear from stakeholders, grasp a fuller perspective of the local problem and help drive a solution-based plan of action.
“I want to make sure we don’t lose the focus on Price and so we’ve been planning since the end of session to have one of these meetings down in Price and open it up as a town hall. I want to hear from the people down there,” he said.
Dolan said lawmakers care about what is happening in Carbon County as it struggles with the prolonged effects of the nationwide opioid epidemic, which killed more people from overdoses than died in the Vietnam War last year alone. She said the problem requires urgent action.
“If this were the Zika virus, if this were influenza, we would have CDC (Centers for Disease Control) tents everywhere. It’s as much an epidemic as any other disease,” she said. “I think it is a multifaceted problem. I think it is going to take many moving parts to address the opioid epidemic. I think treatment is really important. I think opioid reversals are very important.
“Nobody can get into recovery if they die.”
Ray echoed what numerous locals, particularly within the business community, often say about Carbon County’s addiction problems—that the mere mention of it reflects poorly on the area.
“I know there are some concerns that it’s going to make the Carbon County area look bad, but the intent is they realized they had a problem and they fixed it,” he said.
Watkins reinforced that point, saying residents and local officials cannot put their heads in the sand, but should instead put their heads together and work toward a workable solution.
Ray and members of the social services appropriations subcommittee are seeking public input ahead of the scheduled town hall.
People interested in offering their feedback are encouraged to go to le.utah.gov/opioidmeeting or call 801-326-1549 by Sunday, Sept. 9 at midnight to share their answers to the questions posed at the beginning of this article.