- March 28, 2024
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Government and community leaders addressed prescription drug abuse in Flagler County March 8.
Amanda Reynolds, 28, used to feel uncomfortable in her own skin.
“When I grew up, I had many addictions,” she told a crowd Thursday, March 8, at the county-led, prescription drug abuse forum, at the Emergency Operations Center. “Anything that took me out of myself.”
Eventually, Reynolds, a Flagler Palm Coast High School graduate, became an alcoholic and prescription drug addict. She became a thief, she said, and a liar. And then she was arrested, which, looking back, she calls “the best day of my life.”
Reynolds was one of nine speakers at the forum, all of whom discussed drug abuse from different sectors of the community — from law enforcement, through Sheriff Donald Fleming and Circuit Judge Joseph G. Will, to the schools, through Director of Student Services Katrina Townsend.
On a state level, Florida’s drug problem is greater than in any other state, according to Mark Jones, Community Partnership for Children president.
“Florida is the pain-pill capital of the United States,” he said. “There’s more prescription pills in this state than every other state in the nation combined.”
But rebel forces are growing.
The Substance Abuse Task Force, created by the Community Partnership for Children, the Florida Department of Children & Families and the Volusia County Health Department, started in May 2010 with only 10 members, Jones said. Today, the group is 125 members strong.
“We have to take action as a community to deal with this,” he added.
Joseph Coragan, a pharmacy owner, agreed. “I think, finally, we’re walking in the right direction,” he said, about cracking down on prescription drug abuse. Through recent legislation, the number of pain clinics, or “pill mills,” in Florida has dramatically decreased. But still, about eight people die daily from overdose throughout the state. Nationally, about 50 die per day.
According to Fleming, the sale of pharmaceuticals like oxycodone stands as the largest criminal threat in the county. More than 50% of all investigations conducted by his department, he said, are linked to prescription drugs.
A “good addict,” Will added, will spend more than $100 per day on prescription drugs. “And a good addict has to come up with those funds somehow.”
Will said that’s where the crime starts. But he said there are programs that attempt to attack the problem at its source. One such program, Drug Court, dismisses or reduces charges after treatment for repeat drug offenders like Reynolds.
“Almost everyone we see is under 25 … and started using in middle school,” Will added. That sort of profile was uncommon when cocaine and heroin were the most prevalent drugs.
Crime is not the only concern, however, Jones pointed out. After a six-week stretch last year when 126 children were entered into his partnership’s foster program, he reanalyzed the problem, discovering that 80% of all foster kids are sheltered because of parental prescription drug abuse.
The issue is five times more prevalent than any other cause for child abandonment, he said. “These are middle-class folks, these are upper-class folks,” he said. “These are your neighbors, these are your friends.”
To Dr. Jeremy Mirabile, Stewart Marchman-Act addictions specialist, taking on individual addiction is a more manageable order than dealing with the bigger picture.
Drug addiction is a “brain disease,” he said, one that requires a multidisciplinary treatment approach.
“This is not a condition of willpower. Folks don’t will it to be this way,” he said. “It’s about trying to feel normal. It’s not about trying to feel high, after (only) a very short amount of time (in addiction).”
That’s why it’s important, he added, that outlets and funding be available to offer rehabilitation to drug offenders, rather than standard incarceration.
Reynolds, who graduated from Drug Court, has been sober since April 14, 2009. She’s currently married and training to be a yoga instructor, two things she used to think would “never, ever happen.”
“I used to want to die, I was in so much pain,” she told the crowd. “(But) I am a productive member of society today, and that used to really scare me. … I have self-respect today, which I never had when I was in my addiction.”
She received a standing ovation.
Will then appealed to the taxpayers, reminding them that change is never cheap.
“Nothing gets handled for free,” he said. “If we don’t come up with something in the way of resources, we’re sort of wasting our time here.”