Law Enforcement Appreciation Lunch

The Drug Free Ashley County Coalition hosted an appreciation lunch on September 22 at the Mt. Olive Baptist Church. Eric Shoffner was the featured speaker. He owns Gammel’s Pharmacy in Crossett and is the Drug-Free Ashley County Coalition Healthcare Professional Sector Leader.

Eric reported that prescription drug overdose rate statewide was 6 per 100,000 and has risen recently to 22 per 100,000. He suggested that this number is way low. People do not want their loved ones to be remembered for dying of a drug overdose, so they change the cause of death to something else. To help the overdose issue, Narcan is now available without a prescription.

In drug overdose, there is a vicious cycle of blame: The victim’s family blames the pharmacy for dispensing the drug, the pharmacy blames the doctors for writing too many prescriptions, the doctors blame law enforcement for not enforcing the laws, and the law enforcement blames the courts for letting offenders off too easy. One solution to this vicious cycle is to get everyone from all of these organizations together in one room and together develop solutions to the issue.

To help stop the blame, the Arkansas Attorney General’s Office sponsors an annual summit meeting to get everyone involved in the drug problem together to develop plans and programs to holistically address the drug problem. It is called “The Stop Overdose Summit” and is held in Little Rock on November 8, 2023. Click here to get more information and to register. It is free for everyone and everyone is encouraged to attend.

Eric indicated that 6 counties out of 75 in Arkansas are on a critical danger list. An alarming statistic is that in 2022, Ashley County was reported to have 30 overdose deaths per capita (that is, compared to 100,000 people).  The 2020 numbers put us at number 1 in Arkansas, but we are still worse off as of  2022.  Unfortunately, other counties are rising at a faster pace. Two years later, we have moved down to the #5 position of the 75 counties for all overdose deaths.  But moving from 15 per capita to 30 per capita doesn’t sound like improvement.  It is just more tragic. That means other county’s death rates are increasing faster than Ashley County, but our drug problems are still increasing. Click here for the 2022 Statewide Overdose Death Rates.

Eric reported on a survey taken of the youth in Ashley County. The youth rated the substance abuse danger as follows:

• #1 Alcohol
• #2 Marijuana
• #3 Prescription drugs.

Eric stressed that prescription drugs cannot be left in a drug cabinet in our homes where young people can access them. He also stressed that parents wrongly assume the #1 problem with our youth is hard drugs, i.e., heroin and other opioids. They skip right over alcohol and marijuana. Alcohol and marijuana are bigger problems because they lead to hard drug usage and overdose deaths.

He had one ask of Law Enforcement: understand where we are at in overdose prevention. He challenged Law Enforcement to become more involved with our youth in a good way and to be seen as the good guys. He gave an example of the Crossett and Hamburg School Resource Officers’ relationship with the youth in the community.

He said that US consumers account for 97% of the world wide opioid consumption.

We wish to thank all involved in Law Enforcement for all that they do, and to thank Eric for his presentation.