By Rob Ginter, staff writer
March 3, 2010 — The last of four town hall-style public forums to get input on fighting the state’s substance abuse problem was held Feb. 22 at the Carl D. Perkins Community Center in Morehead.
A major focus of forum was to engage the community, health care providers and medical professionals in seeking workable solutions to the drug problem and to address safety concerns being raised throughout the medical community in the wake of the drug-related murder of Dr. Dennis Sandlin from Hazard in December.
A panel of state and local medical and law enforcement officials were in attendance as well as members of the local community, medical professionals from around the area and local law enforcement.
Among the issues discussed was the training of medical staff in how to look for pill seekers, and the medical communities’ relationship to law enforcement officials.
Brought up at the forum was the use of faith-based programs to fight the drug problem.
“My wife volunteers at the Shepard’s Shelter in Mt. Sterling,” said Commonwealth Attorney Keen Johnson. “It’s a Christian rehab and we have services five times a week.
“There is a lot of rehabs and a lot of programs and they do help but compared to getting these people with the love of God in their hearts they are band-aids,” Johnson said. “When you change their hearts you change the kids. We have these kids coming in and their grandparents holding them up. It’s such a tremendous place. It’s really neat to see these people changing their lives.”
Among the law enforcement officers present during the forum was Rowan County Sheriff’s Deputy Donnie Hall who questioned the stiffness of the penalties of those involved in drug related arrests.
“Everybody has friends or family connected to this problem, it doesn’t matter what walk of life you live in,” Hall said. “All we’re saying is that there needs to be something in the middle to where I don’t arrest a guy on Friday and he gets out on Monday and they send him to rehab and he walks off and we arrest him on the next Friday. It’s a continuous process. It’s the same way it’s always been in law enforcement dealing with repeat offenders, the only problem is now that this creature is affecting everybody. There are more people in this county that probably do drugs then those that don’t.
“Ninety-five percent, I would dare say of all of our activity, whether it’s theft, burglary, shoplifting, car wrecks everything, is (dealing with) pain pills. It’s growing rapidly more and more every year and there are not enough badges in this county to take care of the problem.
“The community gets frustrated with us sometimes and make comments like ‘Why don’t you bust my neighbor down the road? He’s selling pills or ‘Why don’t you bust this guy?’ The problem is some of the things we’ve been talking about, number one they have a prescription and if you don’t catch them selling it, it’s hard to bust them, period. You can’t just kick someone’s door in and catch them. It’s going to take the community to come together and get us the information we need.
“As far as the doctors go I think we’re on the right track, I think everybody is aware that we have problems,” Hall said. “Most of the issues that we are seeing in Morehead and Rowan County are coming from Florida and some from Ohio.”
“(The forum) was extremely interesting and I really appreciate all the comments from the doctors,” said Johnson.
“Anytime that you get authorities together and people in the position to do something about the drug problem it has to be a positive thing,” Morehead State Police Chief Matt Sparks said. “I like the fact that the medical profession was represented as it was kind of a combing of professions to talk about the problems from a different side of things.”
Information obtained from the forums will be incorporated into a free region-wide medical symposium scheduled for March 6 at The Hal Rogers Forum, 101 Bulldog Lane, in Hazard.
