Prevention meeting highlights drug use, new disposal tools

Around noon Nov. 4, about 15 different stakeholders gathered in the Platte Valley Community Center (PVCC) for pulled-pork sandwiches and some serious talk. The meeting was a strategy and implementation session arranged by the Prevention Management Organization of Wyoming (PMOW), a public health group.

Representatives from law enforcement, medical providers, local businesses, community organizations and area religious groups were present for the powwow, which lasted about two hours. Discussion centered on 2,600 drug disposal bags acquired by PMOW, a worsening methamphetamine problem in the Valley and the importance of quantifying success at a time when budgets across the state are tightening.

“Deterra bags” are a new tool in the fight to prevent medications of abuse from falling into the hands of drug addicts or infiltrating ground water. Old prescriptions frequently end up flushed down a toilet where they can infiltrate water supplies or in a trash can where they can be discovered by children or animals.

Along with a prescription drop box installed at the Saratoga Police Department (SPD), the PMOW hopes to mitigate this problem with a new stock of 2,600 Deterra bags. According to the National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependency, Deterra bags work through a simple chemical reaction. Expired or unneeded pills are put inside the bag with warm water, and within about 30 seconds the water and a charcoal solution in the bag work together to deactivate about 98 percent of the medicine’s active ingredients. The bags can then be safely thrown in the trash with no further processing.

Erica Mathews, attending the meeting on behalf of the Wyoming Department of Health, said the drug disposal bags were obtained with financing from a federal grant. The bags typically cost less than $3 each purchased retail, and at the meeting attendees talked about distributing the bags to clinics, pharmacies and perhaps the Rawlins Walmart.

At these locations, the bags would be given out for free to patients filling prescriptions for narcotic opioids or other dangerous drugs. “I get asked all the time what to do with old medication,” Jennifer Oiler, a nurse-practitioner at Platte Valley Medical Clinic said. Mathews said the 2,600 bags given to Carbon County make Carbon County the largest recipient of bags among thirteen Wyoming counties that have requested them.

Another topic that had many meeting attendees animated was methamphetamine, or “meth” use in the area.

“It really has taken off in the past year,” noted Saratoga Chief of Police Robert Bifano. “It’s everywhere, it’s not just here,” he added. Bifano said drug arrests are only the tip of the iceberg, with property crimes and disputes also blossoming out of rising addiction rates.

Loretta Hansen, a social worker for the Carbon County Sheriff’s Department put the issue in the context of cratering state budgets and a lack of treatment resources. “What are we doing with our mental health and our rehab (facilities)? We’re not putting money into that,” Hansen said derisively. “You cannot arrest yourself out of a problem. That doesn’t change anything,” Hansen continued. “My view as a social worker is that intervention needs to be elsewhere (not the legal system),” Hansen said.

Local resident Mitch Bangert noted that several Narcotics Anonymous groups meet weekly in Saratoga, but Hansen said those meetings were inadequate by themselves. “That’s relapse prevention. That’s the maintenance part, the treatment part…” she trailed off.

“In the past six months, I would say probably 80 percent of the stuff I’ve been dealing with is linked to meth in some way,” Bifano said. Unfortunately, he said this wasn’t necessarily reflected in official statistics. According to him, meth was suspected to have played a role in crimes like burglaries or fights, but the department frequently lacked witnesses or hard evidence to substantiate those suspicions.

Mathews told the room that there may be grant money available to help Saratoga address the meth issue, but accessing that money would require gathering evidence. “Through those funding streams, I need the data to say, ‘This is a problem in the county,’” she said. Mathews suggested the county coroner’s office may be able to provide some evidence of a growing meth problem.

Getting numbers to tell a compelling story to outside funding agencies was a consistent theme of the luncheon. As participants fretted about ongoing financial distress at the statehouse and how that may impact a wide variety of budgets and programs, Mathews repeatedly stressed that quantification could be the community’s knight in shining armor.

“What the Department of Health and the (Center for Disease Control) are looking at when they’re funding stuff is, ‘What are your leading causes of premature death,” PMOW’s Sally Patton added.

One positive note to emerge from the meeting was the high-esteem Valley youth are generally held in. “We have good kids in this community. We don’t have a lot of problems with our kids,” Bifano said, citing the high number of children involved in extra-curricular activities.

The chief of police tempered that praise with some realism, however: “It only takes one kid to start using (meth) and get addicted and get some other people on it,” he warned.