Out of naloxone: State to help supply counties with heroin overdose drug
The text came at 5:15 in the morning. “Where can we find additional naloxone? We’re out in Jennings County,” read the message from the head of the Indiana State Police to Dr. Jennifer Walthall, deputy state health commissioner.
More than a dozen people had overdosed on opiates in the county in the span of a few hours, some requiring multiple doses of naloxone to revive them, and county first responders had exhausted their supply of the life-saving drug.
Fortunately, Walthall knew exactly where to turn. That day, Aug. 24, Indianapolis Emergency Medical Services sent 100 naloxone doses south to Jennings County.
But the averted crisis sparked an idea: the establishment of a statewide naloxone rapid distribution repository to avert similar emergencies.
Before the end of this year, the Indiana State Department of Health plans to have 50 just-in-case doses of naloxone placed in each of the state’s 10 public health districts. First responders can turn to the repository if they use up their own supply.
Supercharged heroin puts Indy on alert
“We’re all on board that naloxone needs to be in play at the time of need,” Walthall said. “We can’t wait for it.”
The repository will cost about $100,000, Walthall said. The money will come from a $300,000 grant that ISDH received from the Indiana Criminal Justice Institute’s State Drug Free Communities Fund.
Most likely, rural counties will be the beneficiaries of the repository, Walthall said. First responders in Indianapolis and other urban areas do not have difficulty keeping sufficient naloxone in stock.
Walthall announced the repository Tuesday at a meeting of the Governor’s Task Force on Drug Enforcement, Treatment and Prevention. The meeting, the penultimate one the task force will hold, took place just a few miles away from Austin, Ind. Austin’s HIV epidemic linked to drug use sparked the creation of the task force last September.
Now, as the task force plans to wrap up in the coming months and issue a final report in advance of the 2017 legislative session, the members heard an update on how police officers in Scott County responded to the epidemic.
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After realizing the scope of the drug problem, law enforcement officials reached out to their federal counterparts for assistance tracking major drug suppliers in the area in an operation dubbed “Dire Straits.”
In February, officials arrested a Scott County man, his girlfriend and 17 accomplices who helped secure drugs in Indianapolis, Louisville and Detroit and sell them in Scott County. The following month, officials arrested another five people who had tried to fill the shoes of the other suppliers.
Use of illegal drugs — methamphetamine, heroin and particularly Opana — continues to be a problem in Scott County, although how people obtain those substances has changed in the past year, Scott County Sheriff Dan McClain told the task force.
“Since the takedown of Dire Straits … there isn’t any one specific person supplying large amounts of drugs to Scott County. People are going to Louisville, Indianapolis to get drugs, mostly for personal use,” he said.
Unlike other places like Jennings County that have seen spates of heroin overdoses all within a few hours, Scott County has thus far been immune, likely because there is no one large local source of drugs, McClain said.
Call IndyStar reporter Shari Rudavsky at (317) 444-6354. Follow her on Twitter: @srudavsky.