Discussion on impact of opioids

Opioid addiction is growing in communities across the state. In the last three years, 481 opioid related deaths have been reported to the Mississippi Bureau of Narcotics. A town hall meeting was held earlier in Diamondhead to address the impact of opioids.
It’s a growing epidemic that’s spreading throughout the state of Mississippi. Opioid addiction is now becoming more common in local communities and several departments and offices are urging the public to be educated and prevent drug overdose. “In 2016, there were enough prescription pain killers dispensed in the state of Mississippi that every living breathing person in the state could have possessed 70 dosage units each. You’re talking about a population of 2.9 million. That’s in excess of 201 million tablets that were dispensed in the state of Mississippi.”
For the past three years, more than 85 percent of overdose deaths reported in Mississippi were opioid related. The highest numbers of prescription overdose deaths have been in Harrison County and Jackson County.
Commissioner Marshall Fisher of the Department of Public Safety says the problems are not only with drug abuse, but also over prescribing. “The truth is, the pharmaceutical industry flooded the market with these pain killers and led people to believe that they were just as safe as Tylenol or Advil or something like that and now we have an issue where we’ve got more people dying in this country from drug overdoses than we have from gun violence.”
But Michael Jordan with the Department of Mental Health says there is a light at the end of the addiction tunnel. “When understanding addiction, there can be a gambit of anything. There can be faith based programs through church. It can be a 12 step program. It can be medicated assisted treatment. There are a lot of different treatment options for people to choose, but they have to choose what they feel will best help them. It’s whatever makes them productive again.”