Top stories 2018 | No. 5: Glimmer of hope in opioid crisis – News – seacoastonline.com

By Kyle Stucker kstucker@seacoastonline.com

New Hampshire is on track to close 2018 with its first decrease in fatal overdoses since 2012. While area recovery leaders and law enforcement officials say it’s a positive sign, they stress it shouldn’t obscure the fact that significant work still needs to be done regarding opioids.

According to the latest drug death data from the state’s Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, a projected 437 people will have died statewide due to overdoses by the end of the year, down from 488 in 2017 and 485 in 2016.

“It’s good that it’s getting better, but the numbers are abominable,” said John Burns, the director of the Dover- and Rochester-based SOS Recovery Community Organization. “One is unacceptable… It’s kind of the somber reminder, ‘Let’s not get all giddy with this.’ We’ve seen it flat and now we’ve seen it decline. Great. I don’t want anyone to lose sight just how devastating this is.”

Rather than showing a significant improvement in the opioid crisis, Burns and Dover police Lt. Brant Dolleman are among those who said the numbers show key efforts — like the increase in Narcan availability and the area’s continually expanding assistance — are starting to yield more measurable results.

“I don’t see it as a lot better,” Dolleman said of the picture painted by local and state drug death data. “Fewer overdoses are reported to police, not that there are fewer overdoses. I think there are more of those who survive and never end up with a police or paramedic response because there’s more Narcan out there for civilians to use, and that’s a good thing because people are surviving overdoses.”

The opioid crisis and its effects were among the top storylines of 2018, much as they have been in previous years.

The year included a number of notable developments, such as the state’s new hub-and-spoke treatment model.

Starting in January 2019, the model will use $45.8 million in federal funds over the next two years to increase access to recovery services and medically assisted treatment, as well as reduce opioid deaths and unmet treatment needs.

The hub-and-spoke name comes from the fact that the state will use nine regional hubs to facilitate a unified healthcare system. From those hubs, other local care providers will serve as the spokes that carry the services further into the communities. Dover’s Wentworth-Douglass Hospital will serve as the Seacoast’s hub.

Some of 2018’s stories covered trends, such as the fact that new, stronger forms of fentanyl are continuing to replace heroin as the primary illicit narcotic on the streets.

That trend is supported by the medical examiner’s Dec. 7 report. The report indicates fentanyl was the sole cause of 161 of the 330 fatal overdoses confirmed to date (with 83 cases still pending), while heroin accounted for only one fatal overdose. Two other cases were caused by a combination of fentanyl and heroin, according to the state.

Other trends included hospitals reporting continued upticks in the number of opioid-related emergency cases they see, as well as a renewed surge in crystal meth in the area. Officials say the latter could be due to a misconception meth is safer than opioids.

“There are a lot of people out there that stay away from opioids, they know how dangerous it is, but they figure, ‘It’s safer to use crystal meth,’” David Mara, Gov. Chris Sununu’s advisor on addiction, told Seacoast Media Group in July. “Which is really not the case.”

The year also served as another in which high-profile opioid deaths reverberated throughout the community.

Among them was lobsterman Josiah Beringer. Beringer overdosed July 10 aboard his beloved vessel, the F/V Patricia Lynn II, while it was docked at Badger’s Island in Kittery, Maine.

Beringer’s story went viral because his death occurred a few months after he was asked to leave a rehabilitation clinic in Manchester because he didn’t have health insurance. According to area officials, Beringer’s death serves as a snapshot of a healthcare problem that plagues the New England fishing and lobstering community, among other local industries.

Other fatal overdoses that had an effect on 2018 included the December 2017 death of Abi Lizotte, the young mother who inspired the creation of Rochester’s Hope on Haven Hill in 2016.

Hope on Haven Hill officials say Lizotte’s memory and struggle were at the front of their minds this year as they worked to open a new transitional recovery house to help others like Lizotte. The new facility will open in Rochester in spring 2019 and be named Abi’s Place in honor of Lizotte.

On the law enforcement side, local and federal agencies jointly made Strafford County’s largest-ever fentanyl bust when they arrested a man allegedly involved in a multimillion-dollar trafficking operation in Rochester in September.

Timothy Lafond, 40, of River Street in Rochester, allegedly admitted to investigators following his Sept. 17 arrest that he buys 1 to 2 kilograms of the controlled drug every two to three days and distributes it out of an apartment in the Lilac City’s downtown, according to an affidavit in the federal case’s court paperwork.

Federal officials have previously told national news outlets that a kilogram of fentanyl could be worth $1 million on the street. In addition to his alleged claims about the volume of his sales, Lafond was allegedly found in possession of roughly 2.88 kilograms of fentanyl when he was arrested, according to the affidavit.

Lafond faces potential federal indictment on one felony count of distribution of controlled substances and one felony count of conspiracy to distribute controlled substances. The indictment deadline has been extended out to Jan. 20, 2019, to allow the government and Lafond further opportunity to discuss options for resolving the case ahead of an indictment, according to court records.

At the same time as arrests like Lafond’s made headlines in 2018, area law enforcement officials like Rochester Police Chief Paul Toussaint continued to be adamant that New Hampshire can’t arrest its way out of the opioid crisis.

Hub and spoke provides reason for optimism, they said, as do a variety of other local-level recovery, prevention and harm-reduction efforts up and down the Seacoast.

Some of those efforts include an increased emphasis on harm reduction and a better understanding of substance use disorders, according to recovery leaders. Various recovery organizations focused in 2018 on expanding the way they serve those with SUD and the community around them, while harm reduction advocates increased their outreach and the number of service sites available to those who need them.

For example, harm reduction nonprofit Hand-Up Health Services expanded to Somersworth in 2018, adding a syringe service program in the Hilltop City much like the ones it already operated in Dover and Rochester.

Hand-Up leaders say the programs are designed to connect people with treatment and supports as well as encourage them to reduce their substance use, in addition to reducing harm by providing a needle exchange, Narcan and fentanyl test strips.

In November, SOS became the first recovery community organization in the county to receive both an “exemplary” level of accreditation and a five-year accreditation from the Council on Accreditation of Peer Recovery Support Services.

Speaking of SOS, Dover and Farmington’s police departments worked with the organization earlier in the year to implement their own versions of the national LEAD program to help divert people from the criminal justice system into case management.

LEAD (Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion) is designed to reduce criminal recidivism, and thus enforcement and imprisonment costs, by working closely with recovery coaches to connect nonviolent people with various forms of assistance, according to police officials.

Various area hospitals added recovery supports and coaching in 2018, or expanded the ways in which hospital employees work with area organizations to provide assistance, according to healthcare officials. Frisbie Memorial Hospital in Rochester made headlines in October when it said it plans to take a more transparent approach by sharing more data and information on public social media accounts in order to break down stigmas.

These are just some of the developments celebrated by the recovery community in 2018. At the same time, officials like Burns and Dean LeMire of the New Hampshire Harm Reduction Coalition say the state isn’t close to where it needs to be on several related issues.

One such issue is housing. The region’s housing crunch is well documented, but recovery leaders say the increasingly expensive and limited housing stock, combined with limited space in local recovery houses, makes the opioid crisis harder for everyone connected to it.

“We get a lot of people (who) come into our door, but aren’t able to access treatment services right away and there’s nowhere to temporarily house them,” said Burns, calling for the creation of more temporary respite facilities that offer wraparound services, as well as more housing programs that provide medically assisted treatment. “They aren’t living in safe environments and they’re ready for treatment, and we lose them because there’s nowhere to keep them.”

Recovery leaders say housing goes hand in hand with a number of things that need to be expanded in 2019 in order to continue to stem the opioid crisis, like medically assisted treatment programs, transportation infrastructure, recovery-friendly workplaces, and stipends to help residents as they enter specialized work training programs.

“There is still no other health condition where you see the number of deaths … and the number of tragedies and it still doesn’t parallel what is needed,” Burns said. “They’re still worlds apart.”

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Follow our countdown of the year’s top local news at Seacoastonline.com/topstories2018 and Fosters.com/topstories2018.