OBAMA ON HEROIN CRISIS: Smithtown Activists Say Alas
Last week The White House announced a series of new strategies to take on the nation’s behemoth heroin epidemic, particularly hard hit are Eastern states like New York. Among other things the President spoke about treating addicts as opposed to incarcerating them. This was the first time the President of the United States spoke about the present epidemic in the seven and a half years since he became the most powerful man in the world.
Many were waiting for this day, particularly treatment providers and activists on Long Island who have been on the front line for over a decade trying to bring attention to it, increase treatment options and prevention options and to educate both local and state legislators as well as the public about it.
Thousands of families have been affected in Nassau and Suffolk. Far too many kids are dead, many are wasting away as they are playing Russian Roulette with their needles. Some get clean, treatment works for some but others even if they stop using will never be the same. The damage can be quite severe to the brain after years of use.
Kim Revere is President of Kings Park in the kNOw and she is one of these activists and a founding member of the Smithtown non-profit whose roots go back to 2005. “I am pleased to hear that the White House is addressing the opiate epidemic that is responsible for the devastation of a generation of young Americans,” she explained. Like the war call for most advocates in ‘the movement’ Revere says we definitely need to increase access to treatment for addicts but we also need to ramp up prevention services. Right now the U.S. Center for Disease Control calls this an epidemic, but this is not news to people like Revere or Linda Ventura of Kings Park.
Ventura lost her beautiful son Thomas about three years back to a heroin overdose. She started a non-profit called Thomas’ Hope that helps to fund the treatment of young people in need. She also hosts an Internet television show on Madhouse T.V. called Long Island in Crisis that airs on Tuesday evenings. A gifted orator, she has been an enormously powerful voice for the movement and in galvanizing elected officials in Albany as well as the press.
She says the 2.5 million the White House if putting up is not even a drop in the bucket. “The United States is in Crisis with a person dying every (I believe I just read) every 13 minutes from opiates,” she added. She also spoke of the drug Narcan whose use the President wants to increase. It’s an opiate blocker that reverses an overdose which can take a few hours opposed to instantaneously as most people think. “Narcan is a second chance not a cure, we need appropriate level of treatment on demand as prescribed by an addiction professional,” she continued. Ventura and Revere have lobbied for many critical bills in Albany, many historic bills that other states are scrambling to mimic as they succumb to the same fate as Long Island and New York State. “We need step down housing with support after rehab coupled with learning a job skill or education for young people after they get clean,” she added.
Much is being done but more needs to be done and many feel the answer lies in prevention programs. Revere is one of them. “My hope is that much of the funding will go toward educating the public about heroin and opiates the way that we went after tobacco. Every school district in this country should have an evidence-based prevention program from Kindergarten through 12thgrade,” she demanded.
She say that unfortunately the current trends in substance abuse are a symptom of deeply rooted systemic problems within today’s society. “The article states that a portion of the funding will go toward targeting sources of heroin trafficking. I am quite confident that the powers that be are well aware of where the drugs are coming from and who is doing the trafficking,” she said. Many say we have enough overflowing jails in the United States, more per capita than any other industrialized nation. However, O’Bama is insisting that they will be going after the big traffickers as far as arresting and incarceration.
Revere makes the most poignant point of all, once many wish the President made. “We live in a society that is based on supply and demand. The supply is plentiful so we must put an end to the demand of mind altering substances,” she ended. Putting an end to the demand goes right back to prevention. Ventura is also on the Board of Directors Families in Support of Treatment (FIST) & St Joseph treatment facility. Revere is also a member of F.I.S.T. They are hosting along with other non-profits and treatment centers the First Annual Walk for Hope this Sunday at Farmingdale State College on the Great Lawn at 4:00 p.m.