Hello everybody welcome to The County Seat
I'm your host Chad Booth. Today we are going
to have a lengthy discussion for the entire half
hour on a single topic and it is the opioid
problem in Utah. It's been in the headlines a lot
but it seems likes on a daily basis you start to
see opioids connected to just about every
problem that we are having and it is definitely
part of the Rio Grande issue its part of rising
crime rates its part of a continued mental illness
it programming in jails across the counties and
it's all around a source that is now being
attributed in large part to prescription pain
medications as to why it has exploded. Joining
us now for our conversation today is of course
the Speaker of the Utah State Legislature, Greg
Hughes thank you Mr. Speaker for joining us.
Brian Besser who is the district agent in charge
for the DEA drug enforcement agency here in
Utah thank you for taking time to join us and
Commissioner Bill Lee from Utah County. They
Besser I am going to start with you and just try
to get a scope of how pervasive opioids are
obviously they sent in the big guns you have
been sent to Utah been here for a year?
About a year and half or so.
Tell me what the story is and how woven into
the fabric our society this has become.
It's a great question and it's a question I try to
paint in the context of at least my personal
experience I have been doing drug enforcement
for about 26 years and to be honest with you I
have never seen anything like it. I remember
working worth the meth amphetamine scourge
years ago in the early 90's that swept across the
United States and we watched that proliferate
even in a smaller households in the east coast I
was stationed in New York at the time and the
meth amphetamine scourge again it took us by
storm and everyone was taken back by that
because you had a drug that could be made at
home to some degree completely different then
what we are dealing with now. Now we have
this opioid crisis that is literally burgeoning
across the United States last year 2016 we lost
64,000 individuals in this country to drug
related overdose deaths. I try to paint that in
an appropriate context you could literally take
Lavelle Edwards stadium on Brigham Young
Campus fill that completely full, every single
seat on game day and wipe that off the face of
the map. That is 64,000 people. That is how
many people we lost last year this year's
numbers do not look any better. So we are
losing a lot of people to drug related overdose
the majority of those deaths are opioid and
heroin related.
has not been following to make the connection
between opioids and heroin I know the
billboards along the freeway are trying to
educate us that one is the same as the other
how are we getting a growing heroin problem
and an opioid problem what is the linkage
there?
That's a great question. Opioids are a synthetic
drug and Opiate with a "te" is more of a natural
drug we make heroin and morphine out of
opiates. Opioids are manmade they are
synthetic. So our synthetic opioids that we are
seeing now especially our pharmaceuticals like
Oxycodone, OxyContin, Hydrocodone, etc.
those are extremely powerful they have a very
highly addictive nature very highly addictive
properties to them and when individuals either
inadvertently or sometimes accidentally get
addicted to these drugs they can end up
suffering with addiction 80% of those
individuals now are seguing to street heroin its
cheaper its more readily available you get the
same type of psychotropic psychoactive affects
as you do with opioids when you are using
heroin. That is what we are seeing, it's really a
sense of supply and demand. If you can no
longer get the opiates or the opioids you end up
transferring heroin because it's on the street
and it's readily available but it is very deadly
and like we said it's the same dead that you
suffer from with opioids or heroin.
the rising element of mental illness and
homelessness and we will do that this as our
first topic when we come back here on The
County Seat.
Welcome back to The County Seat we are
talking today about opioids I want to bring my
attention from the drug and the addiction itself
to the manifestations of it which most arguable
or most people are aware has been
concentrated about the growing number of
homeless problems in the Rio Grande area of
Salt Lake City. Enough so that Speaker Hughes
adopted this a mission. You have gone a little
further than most people thought you decided
in order to solve the problem you needed to
work there tell me what has been going on?
Chad, the state legislature a number of years
ago realized that this growing open air drug
trafficking that was going on in Salt Lake City
and around the Rio Grande area and the
homeless services that were there that was out
of control to a point where it was pretty hard to
see a city or its police department all by itself
deal with the carnage with the crime with the
eco system of crime and the problems that
were there. So we began engaging as a state
and I describe it as we were helping with the
future construction in the resource centers. We
were putting police officers in our Midvale
family center to help keep a calming effect as
we kept that facility open longer. But we were
finding is in the areas that we were as a state
providing more appropriations things were
getting worse we were told that year over year
things were worse than they had ever been.
And now that is hard to hear as a state law
maker because when you put funds finite funds
towards an effort there are a lot of things that
you walk away from and a lot of my colleagues
are not from Salt Lake City or Salt Lake County
but they show the leadership that we were
going to come together and try to fix a problem
that we thought was larger than one city or one
county and it was a state. My disappointment
and even my regret that after all we had done
things were continuing to spiral and social
disorder was beyond what I think the average
Utahn would even understand. So I had a
tipping point over the 4th of July holiday we had
some death and violent acts occur it was in the
USA today the UK daily mail the whole world
was watching the urban chaos happening in our
capitol city and I decided on July 5th that I was
going down to that area I was going to have a
storefront office and all my legislative meetings
were going to be held right there in front of and
at the Rio Grande and so we began to have
policy discussions and starting to watch things
we had not seen before and you were seeing in
the Capitol building or in a committee meeting.
So what we did we began to lay the ground
work for what is called Operation Rio Grande.
Operation Rio Grande is looking to restore the
social order break the eco system of crime and
most importantly for those that are vulnerable
we have had wolves amongst the vulnerable for
years down there that was contributing to a
growing epidemic of drug addiction. We
wanted to stem that tide we wanted to get
after and break up that eco system of crime and
bring help to those who needed it. Here is
what I learned in my time down there. 4 out of
the 5 heroin addicts that were looking for their
fix their balloon of heroin out of somebody's
back pack 4 out of 5 began their addiction
through pain medication and opioid
prescriptions.
4 out of 5?
Yes, 4 out of 5. And that was staggering to me
and then I thought wait a minute did they abuse
those drugs did they get outside of that
Doctor's prescription. It turns out Chad that
well within the doctor's prescription you could
find yourself a heroin addict or an addict of
opioids if you can't find them moving on to
heroin within ten days. I was naïve to this. So I
looked at an area where we had 67 million
dollars of state county and city resources
service providers coming down here 67 million
dollars we planned to appropriate and spend
and use in the next 20 months in that area. And
I will tell you the fountain head of that chaos
are opioids where people have become drug
addicted and they are there for a market that is
insatiable.
unsaid in what you just told me is that some of
those people that you think are derelicts and
societal misfits that are living under viaducts
the stereotypical type we have had very easily
could have been an a young rising athlete in
high school football team as little as 6 months
ago?
Absolutely. It's the saddest thing and I was so
naïve to this as I decided to stay down there
and learn peoples stories because there is too
anonymity down there where the criminals can
walk amongst and prey upon people that are in
dire circumstances what I learned is that you do
have athletes who have had a surgery and
found themselves addicted you have people
who have come across an appropriate or what
looked like an appropriate prescription from
their physician that has thrown them into this
addiction and when it becomes too hard to get
that prescription drug that is where the heroin
becomes your next option and we were seeing
it, Chad. People from all walks for life that were
frequenting this area. That Rio Grande Street
was a McDonald's drive through of drug
trafficking and it was unabashed. They did not
care if police officers were there. I was in a suit
they did not care it did not slow anyone down.
And when you saw that as well as the
murdering and the violence that was happening
people that needed help there were invisible
barriers where people were afraid to get to that
area. My issue is this as a policy maker. We
have been talking about the bottom of this cliff
where people are devastated and they have
fallen I want to get above this cliff and I want to
talk about the manufacturers of these opioids.
You have 99% of these drugs that are produced
on the planet being sent to the United States
which only consists of about 5% of the world's
population that stat is staggering when you
think about it.
come back we will talk about what some of the
counties are doing and what we would like to
see at least what Speaker Hughes would like to
see and obviously Agent Besser and we will
cover that when we come back on The County
Seat.
Welcome back to The County Seat we are
talking today about the Utah opioid crisis.
Agent Besser I have been corrected, because
my image is the good kid gone bad he ends up
looking like he lives under a viaduct you are not
seeing this.
Yes, it is completely different. The paradigm
has completely changed. You know people
think of drugs they think of the dirty side of
town. What we are seeing is it is not
necessarily the case anymore. It used to be
drugs come in a baggy what about the drugs
that come in a bottle you cannot divorce the
two. We are literally seeing soccer moms,
clergy, business men, and high school kids,
grade school kids getting hooked on opioids,
quietly at home and not talking about it
because they do not want to deal with the
stigma of shame that may come with that
quietly dying at home. Something I have never
seen before. That is how pervasive this is. That
is the difference now we are no longer dealing
with the seedy side of town. We are dealing
with the home.
Commissioner Lee talk to me for a minute
about what Utah County has done as you have
been a headline maker as far as what is
happening with this and I was very surprised
but gratified when I read the headline.
Yes, in looking at this, this is not something that
is behind the scenes as mentioned here. These
are faces that we see we all know them it's in
our neighborhoods it's in our families it's there
all the time and we cannot just duck away from
this. As elected officials we have taken an
sworn oath to protect and defend and that
means to the citizens of our counties as well as
we look at that in a realistic manner we have to
stand up to some of these issues and say here
we are we are going to make a stand on it is not
something we are just going to hide behind and
say maybe some other day. That is a big point.
want to jump to that quickly. They are saying
out there that opioids are safe and effective
that they treat chronic and non-cancer pain.
They also say that the existence of scientific
evidence that opioids are affective for long term
use. It is a narrative that is not correct and as
elected officials and as we are looking at this it
does not just affect the people we have it
within our sheriff's department where we are
looking at the jails we deal with it on a regular
basis. Our Wasatch mental health issues the
drug and alcohol abuse all of the substance that
we are trying to alleviate they are their
constantly. It affects the county on its bottom
line with the budgeting because we have to go
after and deal with these issues. There are in
our emergency rooms we have every day more
than 1000 people treated in the emergency
rooms for misuse of prescription drugs. Not for
the proper use but misuse of prescription drugs.
These need to be addressed we are not
necessarily going out there and saying we want
to have everybody always feel pain all the time
but it's the misuse and then the leading as it
gets into the drug abuses and the drug
overdoses that are a big concern for us and we
have that standing in the county where we are
directly affected by that and we are leading out
and we are saying we need to pursue legal
actions to turn the tide of this or to at least
address it.
So you are saying that basically you are going to
seek a legal remedy and not wait for the
legislative remedy and that legal remedy is
based not only on harm to individuals within
your county but actual harm to the county and
its resources.
Exactly. Harm to the county and its resources,
we have put millions of dollars to fight against
this and to offset it so yes it is a legal action that
would say that the county is at risk here.
I think this is a very noble thing that Utah
County is undertaken but do you think it will be
enough to turn the edge of conversation?
Utah County alone, no way. It has to be a
whole bunch of counties and states and others
that come into play to make it happen.
Chad, here is what is important. You 12 states
who on their own, not collectively or in
coalition of states, but 12 states that have
stepped forward and said we are going to
litigate with big pharma because you are
producing a product that is turning heroin
addicts out of patients within ten days. So
within 30 to 60 days people can within the
prescription they have been prescribed become
addicted. Dangerously or even fatally addicted.
We want to see states and counties we have
four Republican counties in the state of
Tennessee a good Republic red state like
Tennessee you have got over 30 counties some
of the largest counties in the United States who
have to again at the bottom of the cliff try to
help people who have fallen. Trying to help
with behavioral health and trying to keep the
wolves and the heroin dealers away from them
we are going up to the top of this cliff and we
want there to be an enormity of counties and of
states and even cities that go to the big pharma
and litigate until the point where the
manufactures of these drugs the liability is too
great. We have to change practice we have to
change behavior. That is what I am after there
are settlements and dollars to be retrieved to
reimburse Operation Rio Grande all the costs
that counties and the states have incurred but
until we get this multi prong attack until there is
again an enormity of law suits and
accountability brought upon those who are
bringing these drugs into the market I do not
think you will get the change in behavior.
Let me ask you Bill has there been push back
from what Utah County is setting out to do.
There have been some emails that have started
and I am sure there will be push back for it and
litigation is always counted in dollars but in this
case sometimes it's the people that are more
important for us to be looking at not necessarily
the dollars win loss when it comes to dollars
that is not necessarily why I am involved but
that is how we keep score and in this case it is
trying to say enough is enough when it comes
to this and we need to turn that tide and it is
more important for us to get our people in the
safe places and the marketing done
appropriately.
Would the litigation direct a different
prescribing method or at a court level or a
labeling thing what are you hoping for as a
remedy?
Well stop this false marketing for one and turn
it around so we don't have this kind of
marketing going on that allows for these drugs
to be out there and in a sense they are
dangerous it's a dangerous drug and yet they
are sitting on our shelves. They are sitting in
our closets they are there all the time and it's
almost like sitting on the edge of a line at the
freeway where we are saying well we have all
this right here and we can have a camp right
there and not knowing that the cars are going
past 100 miles an hour and we say we are okay
because we are on this side of the line but what
don't know is that our kids and others can cross
that line so quickly that they are gone in
seconds.
Let's drive this home for victims that cannot
speak for themselves. Right now in America
every 25 minutes a baby is born suffering from
opiate withdrawal every 25 minutes one baby
that is one out of every 200 babies born is born
suffering from some type of opioid withdrawal
that is staggering to me because those are little
individuals, little victims that cannot even speak
for themselves.
Okay, I'm overwhelmed we are going to take a
break and finish this conversation on The
County Seat.
Welcome back to The County Seat our
conversation today has been about the opioid
crisis and some of the innovative things that the
state the Speaker of the House DEA and the
counties are doing. Let's focus on what
counties need to do. Utah County you guys
have said regardless of whoever else comes to
the table we are going to take this on in a legal
battle and it's a big project this is not a county
attorney thing. What do counties need to do?
We are going out to an RFP, which is a request
for a proposal and we have already had multiple
law agencies across the United States from New
York, Texas, California all over the place come
to us and say what do you think about this issue
and so we will throw that out there and find the
best one that fits the needs we have and we
feel comfortable with and we will move forward
and move forward with a good team in place.
Chad, here is the key. We need strength in
numbers there needs to be a multiple front war
where we need Utah County and Salt Lake
County has indicated that they are ready to step
forward in this space. We need the counties in
the state of Utah to join over 30 counties across
this country in saying if there was such a thing
as a tobacco lawsuit that you could use a
product and maybe get empyema or lung
cancer in 20 years of using that product what
about the product where you can become a
heroin addict in ten days or 30 days. The risks
to this public the carnage it has created has to
be brought forward and we have to confront
this as a population but those that have created
these drugs and the carnage that they have
created have to be held accountable and that is
what the counties to have legal standing they
can step forward and believe that and I really
believe that that bottom line unfortunately is
what will be the catalyst to change attitudes
and practices with the pharmaceutical
companies.
So if counties want to get into this dog fight do
they contact Utah County or contact your office
Speaker Hughes?
We are at a conference now of Utah counties
and I am here to engage with our county
leaders and Commissioner Lee is doing the
same thing in terms of his example and Utah
County's example we are here to talk about
coming together and I think the discussion we
are going to have here at this conference with
our other county public servants we are going
to band together certainly the largest counties
in Utah but every county. There is not a county
that is immune from the carnage that has
occurred here so that is what we are going to
do and continue to do.
I think that in the State of Utah we have a
pretty strong self-constitution within ourselves
we need to come forward and we have always
been able to address issues even hard issues,
this is one of those hard issues we need the
people to stand up and start speaking out and
saying enough enough with this thing and
telling their story.
Okay, gentlemen that is the charge and thank
you very much. Thank you for joining us and
remember local government is where your life
happens, good and bad the solutions will be
found in us collectively working together and
that is part of the reason we bring you the
county seat every week. Share this on social
media look for breaking news on our county
seat Facebook page and like it and you will be
notified of things that are happening in real
time see you next week on The County Seat.
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