Prescription abuse forum held in Wytheville

By AMANDA EVANS/Staff

It was like a Drug Abuse Resistance Education program on steroids.
This past weekend, the Medical Society of Virginia, in partnership with One Care of Southwest Virginia, hosted an educational forum in Wytheville for more than 100 local health care providers, teaching them about the increasing and complex problem of prescription drug abuse.
According to a 2011 report from the Office of the President of the United States, prescription drug abuse is the nation’s fastest growing drug problem. They are the second most commonly abused drugs, after marijuana.
Virginia is one of 16 states in the nation where substance abuse deaths have exceeded car accident fatalities. This is the fifth year in a row researchers have seen an increase the rate of deaths have almost doubled since 1999.
In the commonwealth in 2009, 450 out of 735 substance abuse deaths were from prescription medication—that’s 61-percent.
While the state stats are staggering, many argue it’s really a local concern.
On a per capita basis, Southwest Virginia has the highest level of substance abuse-related deaths in the state, according to figures from the 2009 chief medical examiner’s report. Substance abuse reportedly accounts for 33.5 percent of the deaths in the region.
“The issue of prescription drug abuse is a community issue,” said Ruth Cox, director of acute care services at Mount Rogers Community Service Board in Wytheville.
She is part of the Wythe County Substance Abuse Coalition, founded a little more than two years ago and focuses on community education and community action to prevent drug abuse.
“When you have this kind of epidemic in the community, you have to work together,” she said.
Southwest Virginia is taking the lead on addressing this problem, said Carl Mitchell, executive director of One Care, which co-sponsored the meeting in Wytheville this past weekend.
“We’re leading and creating a model for the rest of the commonwealth,” he said.
One Care, formed in February 2009, is a consortium of more than 21 substance abuse coalitions in the area, including other groups such as Alcoholics Anonymous, Celebrate Recovery and faith-based organizations.
Other regions of the state have patterned their substance abuse prevention programs after successful models implemented by One Care, such as the education forums.
“What they don’t know can hurt them,” he said.
Health care providers are taking a leadership role in addressing this issue, Mitchell said. By getting educated about the problem, it helps keep them from being “duped” into providing these drugs needlessly, he continued.
While there is no one prescription drug that should be singled out, Mitchell said, four pop up on the radar pretty frequently—methadone, oxycodone, fentanyl, and hydrocodone.
Patients will often “doctor shop,” going from doctor to doctor requesting medication.
Virginia legislators are working to find ways to improve the state’s prescription monitoring program, which helps keep track of patient requests for certain medications.
On the grassroots level, though, a new team has cropped up to fight the issue.
A few weeks ago, several people attended an interest meeting for a group called Facing Addiction through Community Empowerment and Intervention Teams, or FACE-IT.
FACE-IT is a grant-funded group of counseling firm Occupational Enterprises out of Lebanon, Va. It is funded in part by parent groups Duke University’s Area Health Education Center and the North Carolina Evidence-Based Practices Center.
Up until now, the only group in Virginia to partner with FACE-IT has been the Twin Counties Prevention Coalition. Now, however, Wythe and Bland counties are in the process of creating a partnership.
Lanny Lindamood, a Bland County resident, was one of the people who attended that first meeting.
“I’m so concerned about the drug problem we have here in the county,” he said, explaining why he chose to become a part of the group. “We need to attack it on all fronts.”
He said he was “shocked’ to find out just how many substance abuse-related deaths could be traced back to prescription drugs.
“The people selling this crap to our kids are murderers,” he said.
Participants in the FACE-IT program commit to one year of active service to try and reduce the drug problem in their communities, explained the program’s director Mark Larsen.
It begins with an intensive three-day weekend training and then group members, about 15 to 20 people, form an action plan. Usually the initial plans are simple and don’t require much time—writing letters to politicians, setting up an awareness Facebook page or hosting an in-service training for different groups. More often than not, Larsen said, group members go beyond what they originally set out to do.
In one community in North Carolina, Larsen noted, the FACE-IT group was so active it began to develop its own political voice even. Through different activities, the group was able to convince their community and local government officials to build a substance abuse treatment center.
The excuse can no longer be “We don’t know what to do about it, so why bother” Larsen said.
Another hurdle to jump in educating communities about prescription drug addiction is the stigma that goes along with it.
“Society views addiction as a moral failing,” he said. “It’s not a moral failing.”
The brain changes fundamentally with taking and abusing prescription medications, he explained. “It’s hard to stay clean. It’s very, very hard to recover.”
“The good news,” he continued, “is that the brain heals.”
But comprehensive treatment programs are few and far between in this area of the state, which may also play into the problem in our area. In Galax there is Life Center and in Lee County there is New Beginnings. There is also a methadone clinic in Tazewell County.
Building a treatment center isn’t a cure-all, Larsen noted. “It takes more than that to have an effective response to the problem.”
Poverty and the high number of manual labor jobs, many of which can cause painful injuries necessitating medication, are two major contributing factors to the high number of prescription drug abuse cases in our area, Larsen said.
He emphasized, as did all others interview, that they wish to see multiple groups from the community working together in a more integrated approach to help alleviate the issue.
Law enforcement groups periodically host drug take-back programs where residents can bring in old or extra prescription drugs to be disposed of properly. Environmentalists discourage families from flushing those pills down the toilet, as they then contaminate the local water system.
Cox suggested calling your health care provider for suggestions of how to properly dispose of unused prescription medication.
“It’s not good to have all those kinds of meds sitting around your house,” she said.
By doing your small part, she said, the community can better address the issue.
“Each citizen is going to have to figure out whether they’re part of the problem or part of the solution,” Lindamood said.
Amanda Evans can be reached at 228-6611 or aevans@wythenews.com