After one of his officers accidentally overdosed during a search and seizure, the police chief of the opioid-besieged town of East Liverpool, Ohio, is calling for stronger penalties for transporting fentanyl and related drugs, and his officers are no longer field testing what they find while on duty.
“It’s just too dangerous,” East Liverpool Police Chief John Lane told STAT on Tuesday. “It’s not worth the risk.”
It’s been eight months since the town’s opioid crisis made national news, and Lane said very little has changed. Patrolman Chris Green collapsed on Friday after brushing a small amount of white powder from his shirt hours after a field test. The powder was suspected of being fentanyl, a powerful opioid that claimed the of lives of more than 1,600 people in Ohio in 2014 and 2015. Green was given the anti-opiate Narcan, once at the station and several more times at a nearby hospital.
“I think it was a total of four doses,” said Lane, who visited Green at the hospital following the incident. “He was still out of it when I went in to see him.”
Overdose calls come in spurts, Lane said. A week will go by with none, and then a bunch will come in over the next several days. Because opioids like fentanyl and carfentanil are so potent and so deadly, Lane said he’d like to see the transport and sale of them to be considered a stronger crime.
“We’re starting to see more pure fentanyl. This stuff is incredibly dangerous. You just throw that in the air, people inhale it, and they’re going to die,” he said.
Last year, the Drug Enforcement Administration released a video warning law enforcement that even incidental contact with the drug could result in a fatal overdose. In Ohio, Attorney General Mike DeWine’s office has issued advisories telling officers to use extreme caution when handling opioids, including wearing gloves, glasses, and ventilation masks, and ensuring a proper seal on plastic bags.
Meanwhile, Green’s overdose has again focused attention on this Ohio River town, whose struggle to combat opioid trafficking has continued even as Ohio Governor John Kasich promised to help with the spiraling problem. Last September, media outlets from across the country wrote about the department’s decision to post on Facebook the photo of two adults who overdosed with a 4-year-old boy in the back seat of their car. The photo was meant to spur action, Lane said then. But the town still deals with a huge demand, and dealers coming from all over to meet it.
Lane said they want the ability to field test, but the latest incident underscores the dangers. Stronger penalties would be a better way to reduce the supply, “otherwise, they’re out the next day and right back on the street,” he said. “We have people coming in here from Chicago. It’s crazy.”
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First and foremost: One less cop on the streets is… one less cop! To Chief John Lane. The percentages of something like this happening again to one of your cops., is that of getting struck by lightning and latter that day winning the lottery. You want to fund more resources tie up our court system because one dead cop had a bad reaction. Well John, why don’t you pull the money out of your pocket (That conversely we in your pocket to began with) and pay for the funding needed? You cant stop the drugs and history should of taught all you thick headed cops this a long time ago. You need a new approach…One for this decade!
This has been proven by science to be inaccurate. There is no way that this incidental contact required four shots. Please stop spreading false panic inducing rumors that hamper the abilities of first responders to help the public. Just do a little more research and maybe contact someone who has the necessary intelligence to actually speak about the ability of fentanyl to be absorbed through the skin.
Do you know what happened when this country enacted prohibition on alcohol? We went from a nation where most people who partook drank beer or wine, but because of the economics of prohibition, there was a switch to hard liquor, and often mis-labeled and/or contaminated beverages passed off as hard liquor. Public drunkenness became a problem as it had never been before.
The stronger the alcohol or fentanyl or whatever, the easier it is to transport, and the better deal it appears to be to the consumer.
We’ve had over a century of drug prohibition, and 47 years of the “war on drugs” spending $51 billion/yr, created dozens of federal drug-war agencies – not to mention addiction-industry supporting agencies (such as NIDA & SAMHSA), and what’s the current headline about opiates/opioids? “Epidemic!”
East Liverpool, Ohio, is not “besieged”. It is a market full of customers. After 100+ years of outlawing, demonizing, punishing, ostracizing and thwarting other life objectives (education funding, housing assistance, career paths cut off), not to mention numerous instances of taking everything a person owns (“civil forfeiture”), and encouraging Hollywood to insert storylines into TV shows & movies to support drug-war tropes, there are still customers.
One way to make sure no more East Liverpool cops are accidentally exposed to dangerous levels of fentanyl would be to end the drug war. Notice we don’t have an epidemic of people blinded by wood alcohol in this century.
Elminating prohibition may have stopped boot legging it has not stopped the disease of alcoholism. The question may be is addiction a plague that is being ignored. Addiction is recognized as a disease my most medical association’s. Alcholism kills approximately 100k annually in the US, 3.3MM Alcohol related deaths globally, there 30MM identified alcholics in the US, 1:3 household has/have been impacted by some type of substance abuse issue, and Alcholism still ranks #1 in total cost to society economically with a price tag of over 250 billion a year!!! I am not down playing the opiate epdemic so my point is lets not igmore the larger issue of addiction in itself. Bassed on current data, and the numbers have varied, the current run rate of dealths by heroin will be 60k annually with a cost to society of more than 50MM annually. People have been dying of herion overdoses for decades but with the the flood and corruption that was created by oxycotin in the 90’s, simple economics created a new bread of addicts with different demographics coupled with laced product with other opiates like fentanyl you have a 50/50 chance of dying. Unlike Alcholism it can take an alcoholic 10-20+ years to dye of thier disease, or even worse get behind the wheel and hit a family of 4 killing everyone. In closing, law enforcement will never win the war on drugs our biggest asset in prevention is educating our children early and often, not lectures or finger pointing, but with real stories of experience, hope and strength