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Chautauqua County Routes Drug Abuse

Can people please stop saying Chautauqua County isn’t making any progress in its fight against drug abuse?

The fact is Chautauqua County has made strides in its work to help those addicted to illegal drugs. Anyone who says otherwise is either waiting for detox centers to pop up on every other street corner or waiting for some other silver bullet panacea that will magically remove this problem from our midst. For those people, it is time for a dose of reality – no single step or action will solve the drug problem. Solving Chautauqua County’s addiction problem and creating help for addicts who want help will instead come from a thousand small steps by county officials, state officials, physicians, private companies and, yes, by addicts, their families and those who treat addicts.

We are a bit disappointed in those who continue to say the county hasn’t made progress on the drug issue in the year between county-sponsored drug forums, because progress has indeed been made. There have been dozens of such small steps taken during the 365 days from the first Chautauqua County Drug Forum and the second forum held earlier this week in Mayville.

The state has passed legislation to curb the abuse of prescription drugs, has put state budget money behind increased overdose prevention efforts, begun a statewide awareness and education campaign that includes $8 million in Combat Heroin grants for community coalitions. Chautauqua County has continued work on its ICE-8 program, a school-based wellness program for kindergarten through 12th grades. Work is ongoing to educate physicians about pain killer use and health care providers are working on clinical staff training to improve recovery outcomes – hopefully without creating a recipe for patients to become addicted to prescription drugs that eventually turns into an addiction to illegal narcotics.

The county is working on residential detox programs, but to expect brick and mortar buildings to pop up in a year is unrealistic. There is money to be raised, state certifications to be secured, state approvals to be garnered and staff to hire in an area that struggles with physician recruitment. Those barriers aside, the county is working with WCA Hospital and Horizon Services to create a 90-day rehab program at the Jones Memorial Health Center as a gap-filler in treatment. County officials from several organizations are working with Rick Huber, Mental Health Association executive director, on his one-stop support center initiative.

Those are a lot of words to express a simple thought – things are happening. They aren’t happening as quickly as some would like or in as grand a scope as some would want, but the county isn’t at a standstill either.

County Executive Vince Horrigan is absolutely correct when he says there is tough work ahead. We can think of no one better than Horrigan to lead this effort and keep all of the agencies and personalities involved moving in the right direction. He has, after all, proven quite capable of such work in handling the North County Water District. He was the first local elected official to take a rational approach toward fixing a broken treatment and prevention system. Now is the time for everyone involved to take a deep breath, refocus their efforts and pursue the initiatives Horrigan outlined on Monday.

They won’t happen overnight. But they will happen.

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