Opioids

No one in Kentucky is more than one person removed from the opioid epidemic, according to state health officials meeting Monday with U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Jerome Adams. The visit comes just days after Adams' call for more people to carry the overdose reversal drug naloxone.

The numbers are in, and they aren't good.

The discussion about helping people addicted to opioids often focuses on getting them into treatment.  But experts in the field of recovery housing say the conversation needs to go farther, to lifelong sobriety.  They say recovery housing can provide the first foundation of support for staying clean and sober.

Updated March 9, 2018 at 4:55 p.m.

Nine of 12 individuals charged in U.S. District Court in Ohio in a narcotics and money laundering scheme are in custody following a year-long FBI investigation. More than 40 others are charged in San Diego, Columbus, Lexington, Kansas and Washington in a case with ties to the Mexican Sinaloa Cartel.

With the opioid crisis continuing to ravage Ohio, the state issued a $10,000 challenge. Tuesday, five winners were announced, including Cincinnati's Kinematechs and a University of Dayton researcher.

Random drug tests are routine for private schools but few area public schools are doing it, even with the opioid crisis. Among the reasons they give for skipping testing include: it's not the best way to partner with families, there's a lack of scientific data on effectiveness, and the issue just hasn't come up.

With three new members, Cincinnati City Council is sworn in and gets to work, the region continues to suffer the effects of the opioid epidemic, Macy's announces the closing of its downtown store, the Ohio governor and senate races take shape and FC Cincinnati still waits to hear about its bid for a Major League Soccer franchise.

Much of the reporting on the heroin crisis is focused on the tragic aspects of the epidemic, leaving people feeling helpless and hopeless without an end in sight. A local organization, the Urban Minority Alcohol & Drug Abuse Outreach Program (UMADAOP), says getting out a message of help and hope is equally as important as telling the story of risk and loss.

This Friday, November 10, Northern Kentucky University will host the inaugural conference of the Ohio River Valley Addiction Research Consortium (ORVARC). The conference will focus on evidence-based research on neonatal abstinence syndrome (NAS).

The year was 1908 and an Ohio doctor, appointed by President Theodore Roosevelt as the nation's first Opium Commissioner, warned that Americans "have become the greatest drug fiends in the world." If the sentiment seems all too familiar in the grips of our current opioid epidemic, you'll find there are many similarities, and some shocking differences, between current times and a drug crisis that dates all the way back to the Civil War.

Hamilton County's leaders aren't counting on help from the state to build an opioid diversion center. Commissioners passed a motion directing the administration to look into building such a facility.