Drugs and Disasters

This week, I had the opportunity to read an article about a small, rural town in the state of Washington. The article discussed the seriousness of their opioid problem and how the community has become immune to it and the consequences. The former chief of police, Ty Trenary, gives a lot of his personal experiences and two scents worth. The small-town community had and has a lot of drug issues, including heroin. The town was in denial because they felt that their demographics were not the same of which drug problems were found, such as in big cities with larger amounts of homeless people. One of the reasons that rural towns, such as Stanwood, Washington, don’t believe they have a problem is because their numbers aren’t the highest. They don’t have the highest amount of deaths due to opioids, but within the last five years, they have seen a growth of addiction in the community. The jails began to be filled with sick people who were drug abusers. This is when Trenary began to see how serious their town’s issue had become.

            To tackle this issue, the town adopted a unique disaster tactic. They are treating their opioid epidemic as if it were a natural disaster, such as a landslide or tornado. They are relating it to an actual landslide disaster that occurred in the state in 2014. The disaster left 43 dead. It was really moving to see everyone working together to try to save those in harm and or in need. The idea with the opioid crisis is to get everyone to work together to try to put an end to the issues. People in local government meet every two weeks and go over items they have placed on a list of things to do. The items on the list are not all able to be accomplished quickly. Some will take years and years. Some of these items include making transportation available to those who need treatment, training family and friends in overdose situations, and sending police to help out the homeless. The idea is not to get these people in trouble, but rather help them to reduce the issues. So far, their efforts are paying off, and they will continue to try to reach their goals.

            I think that their approach to the crisis is really interesting. It also seems to be quite effective. It truly is unique. They’re the first to try this tactic, and I believe that this will set a great example for other communities around the country. I come from a similar community. It is very rural and small. We have the same problem with opioids in our town. I think that if we had more people who cared and were helping the people like this town is that we could bring down the number of users in our community.