New drug policies applauded

March 29--Lisa Murphy missed Gov. Deval Patrick's Thursday press conference announcing his aggressive plan to throw an arsenal of attention and $20 million toward combating opiate addiction.

Murphy heard about the governor's declaration from a member of Parents Supporting Parents, which Murphy founded in 2010 to help desperate parents like herself deal with their child's drug addiction.

Since then, hundreds of lives have been lost to overdoses, she said. Futures have been tarnished by criminal records. Babies are born addicted to opiates such as heroin, methadone, or prescription painkillers. Young people will spend their lives with hepatitis C.

"I just sat in my car and had tears coming down my eyes," said Murphy about when she heard the announcement. "I thought, finally, finally something is happening in our state."

In his announcement Thursday, Patrick promised $20 million for drug abuse prevention, intervention, treatment and recovery programs. He will make Massachusetts the first state in the nation to ban the controversial new painkiller Zohydro ER, and he will allow police officers to carry and administer the overdose reversal drug, Narcan, which had previously been allowed on ambulances. State regulations had prohibited police from carrying and using it.

He's ordered doctors and pharmacists to register with the state's Online Prescription Monitoring Program within a year so officials can track over-prescribing of narcotics.

Murphy -- whose own daughter is in long-term recovery from heroin addiction -- has ideas on how to spend the $20 million slated for treatment and prevention.

She said there needs to be one centralized phone number with all the treatment beds available in Massachusetts, she said.

Currently, members of her group must call each treatment center daily to find a bed to get long-term care for an addict wanting help. Sometimes they can have a list of 20 possible facilities and be making those daily calls for two weeks or more, she said.

"Meanwhile, their (loved one) is going through withdrawal, so they use (drugs) so they won't get sick, and that's when they often overdose," she said.

To navigate treatment options, family members of an addict need to become lawyers, insurance agents and eventually activists, said Karen Herrand, of Cotuit, whose son Jordan Maddox, 22, has been battling prescription drug and heroin addiction for years.

Patrick said untangling the maze of substance abuse treatment is a main goal of the Interagency Council on Substance Abuse and Prevention, which he has given two months to come up with a way to coordinate services and other measures to combat the opiate addiction epidemic.

The nationwide addiction crisis began in the 1990s when the U.S. Food And Drug Administration approved the opiate-based painkiller OxyContin. It quickly became highly abused and overdose rates soared.

Opiate overdoses in Massachusetts rose 90 percent from 2000 to 2012, the governor said.

OxyContin and dozens of other opiate-based drugs have served as gateway drugs to heroin.

Herrand said the governor's ban on Zohydro ER, the first-ever hydrocodone-only drug to be sold without any other drug combination, is a bold move.

Zohydro ER was approved by the FDA in 2013.

"He's really playing with corporate America and that's huge," she said. "It will send a message to the big boys that they cannot do whatever they want. Because we're at the point where lives are more important than money -- finally."

Making Narcan available to police is also a major benefit to keep heroin and prescription drug addicts alive in the short term.

Brain damage sets in within five minutes of a person not breathing, said Max Sandusky, director of prevention and screening at the AIDS Support Group of Cape Cod.

Sandusky's agency trains the general public and police to use Narcan. But his support of Patrick's initiatives goes way beyond Narcan.

"It's addressing a crisis in a multifaceted way," Sandusky said. "They are looking at the big picture. It's a well-executed response."

Cape police chiefs have been waiting for the opportunity to carry Narcan, as police usually arrive at overdose 911 calls before firefighters.

Falmouth Police Chief Edward Dunne said his sergeants and lieutenants are already trained and began carrying Narcan kits in their cruisers Friday.

Mashpee Police Chief Rodney Collins said his officers also are trained and will be equipped with Narcan as soon as a department policy is finalized, probably sometime next week.

"Too bad we had to get to this, as the alarms have been going off for years," said Patricia Persico of Sandwich. Persico's daughter, Alicia, died in 2005 as a result of heroin addiction "Banning Zohydro really sends a message we don't need it or want it. The governor is standing up to the drug companies, and I'm proud of him for doing that.

"So after almost nine years since Alicia got caught in this web, times are changing."

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