Facing Cape Cod’s drug addiction crisis

If there were a shooting in Boston, the first question is where did the gun come from, she added.

"The question we need to ask now is: Where did the medication come from?" Malia continued.

"Heroin is a street drug. ... But the fact is that so many young people and so many of us got addicted from a prescription. That's the key."

Apart from the current opiate crisis, addiction in general needs to be addressed at its roots.

In the fall, Gosnold was able to place drug and alcohol counselors in 6 schools, Tamasi said.

This happened after former Boston Celtics player Chris Herren, whose own opiate addiction nearly cost him his life, told his compelling life story to a local school and shortly afterward, he received 100 emails from young people deep into drugs or considering suicide, Tamasi said.

The counselors in local school will try to help problem students, but also change the culture of schools, and work with families.

Tamasi has also placed mental health counselors in primary care doctors' offices so that people, who would otherwise be ashamed or afraid to call Gosnold, can simply visit their doctor for help with a mental health or addiction problem.

The point is to "normalize" addiction so that it is treated like other chronic illnesses. Like any diseases, catching it early makes it so much easier to manage, Tamasi said.

Barnstable County Sheriff James Cummings talked about Vivitrol, a nonaddictive drug that blocks the opiate receptors in the brain for up to one month.

Vivitrol has been used voluntarily by inmates upon release from jail. The early results are promising, Cummings said.

Since the program began in 2012, 82 inmates received the drug, and more than 50 percent remain in treatment outside of jail, Cummings said.

That compares with a relapse rate from opiates that is as high as 80 percent, Cummings added.

Only nine percent of the Vivitrol patients have been reincarcerated, he said.

After listening to the presentations, Voelxen said her son has never received treatment in prison. He currently is being held at the Barnstable County Correctional Facility on a parole violation. He may receive more jail time or else go into long-term treatment, she said.

"He's a beautiful blonde-haired, blue-eyed guy," she said. "We have two sons, Paul our son and the drug addict. How does he get to those wonderful programs?"

Cummings said the Barnstable County Correctional Facility has two treatment programs, a voluntary paramilitary program, that has a recidivism rate of about 30 percent. And an in-house residential treatment program with a 20 percent recidivism rate.

Cummings said Barnstable County was the first to use Vivitrol in the state. But other jails and the state prison system are in the process of adopting similar programs, he said.

In order to use any of these programs, however, Voelxen must be sentenced, Cummings said.

Malia said the fact the treatment isn't widely done in jails, where the majority of inmates have drug or alcohol issues, "is absolutely beyond comprehension to me."

Ultimately, Hunt said, the state needs to "get rid of the queue" so inmates and noncriminal addicts get treatment when they need it, rather than waiting critical days, weeks or months for a treatment bed or a program.

Also, he said, treatment programs need to have standards and benchmarks for success.

"If we have standards we can have conversations with insurance companies about what is effective to get a person on the right road," Hunt said.

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