Gamble touts Talbot Goes Purple milestones | Local

EASTON — What started as a small community outreach project in Talbot County soon evolved into a drug awareness campaign that now encompasses the Eastern Shore, Washington County and parts of Delaware.

Talbot Goes Purple is an initiative from the Talbot County Sheriff’s Office and Tidewater Rotary that empowers the youth and community to “Go Purple” to take a stand against substance abuse. They promote education and awareness, including the creation of “purple” clubs in high schools, through which students learn they do not need drugs or alcohol to meet life’s challenges.

The project also encourages the “new conversation” between teens and parents, one that includes messages that prescription painkillers are not safe to use recreationally. When going out to the community for an approval, Talbot County Sheriff Joe Gamble recalls being surprised with the support.

“Everywhere we went, every business that we have gone to — the CEO at Easton Utilities, Hugh Grunden, and everyone from the town of Trappe, Oxford and St. Michaels — they were all in,” Gamble said. “We never saw it going as big as it did, as quickly as it did. Once those purple lights went up and once the articles showed up in The Star Democrat, we got swamped with invitations to speak and people who wanted to know more.”

According to the Talbot County Sheriff’s Office, at the end of 2018, there was 26 heroin arrests, 37 cocaine arrests, 11 prescription pill arrests and 239 marijuana cases. In March 2019, there were six heroin arrests, seven cocaine arrests, zero pill arrests, 25 marijuana arrests and four other drug arrests, including one for possession of ecstasy.

Four out of five people who use heroin started with recreational use of painkillers, according to the Talbot Goes Purple initiative. Gamble said it starts out small with kids when they start out with vaping or e-cigarettes, also known as “juuling,” and even pills in the medicine cabinet.

“The education needs to continue to stay vigilant, and parents need to be educated what is going on there,” Gamble said.

For those who are on the path of addiction, Gamble said although the sheriff’s office works 24 hours a day, seven days a week, the health department does not carry those same hours to help someone in need, including parents and children. There is a need for paid peer support and more recovery houses for women.

“Typically, we are getting calls on weekends and holidays when people need help or they have a nonfatal overdose. It would be nice if we had paid peer support, 16 hours a day, seven days a week,” Gamble said. “We do have a good women’s recovery house in Talbot County, but since I have just been sheriff, there is a number of recovery homes in the greater Easton area, but people have been successful.”

In March 2018, the Talbot County Council decided to join in a multi-district lawsuit against drug companies to hold them accountable for their role in the opioid crisis. They voted to hire the Robbins Geller law firm to pursue the litigation.

Since its inception in 2017, Dorchester, Queen Anne’s, Caroline, Kent and Washington counties in Maryland and Sussex County, Del., have participated in Talbot Goes Purple.

The campaign has received recognition, including in October 2017, when Vice President Mike Pence commended Gamble’s efforts in a letter. Maryland Comptroller Peter Franchot presented the William Donald Schaefer Helping People Award for Talbot County to Gamble and former Tidewater Rotary Club President Lucie Hughes on Tuesday, April 2.

“We have been invited over 200 times to speak, and I just got an invitation to speak at the University of Maryland Shock Trauma on an opiate panel about what we are doing here in Talbot County,” Gamble said.

For the third annual Talbot Goes Purple initiative taking place in September, Gamble plans to talk more about fentanyl, because it is 50 to100 times more potent than heroin. He would like to educate the community on fentanyl because that is what the sheriff’s office is seeing in every fatal overdose. The drugs include heroin laced with fentanyl and cocaine/fentanyl mixes.

“The deaths have skyrocketed, so we want to educate people on that. We also want to talk about vaping,” Gamble said. “We are also going to keep hitting the same stuff, including Good Samaritan laws. The more parents and grandparents talk to their kids, the better their chances are.”

The Herren Project and the Project Purple initiative were concepts developed when former Boston Celtics basketball player Chris Herren spoke at a local high school in 2011. In the front row were students wearing purple shirts to show solidarity for a drug- and alcohol-free lifestyle.

This one small effort now with its numerous accolades and robust community support can look back at three years of making very big change.

“I worked in every county in the state of Maryland, and (Talbot County) is the best community in the state,” Gamble said. “There is no place like Talbot County. The people here are so willing to give up their time and their resources to help educate the next generation.”

For more information, visit www.talbotgoespurple.org or Facebook under @TalbotGoesPurple, or email talbotgoespurple@gmail.com.