Kaine hosts discussion on opioid epidemic
U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., co-sponsored the Disrupt Fentanyl Trafficking Act, a federal law passed in December requiring the Department of Defense to develop a strategy to “target, disrupt, or degrade threats to national security” caused by fentanyl trafficking in Mexico.
But at a roundtable discussion at the Loudoun Government Center in Leesburg on Jan. 8, Kaine said that, while there is a need for enforcement and interdiction, there will always be supplies of fentanyl — a synthetic opioid up to 50 times more potent than heroin — as long as there is demand for it.
He said the dynamic is similar to methamphetamine use in Virginia while he was governor, from 2006 through 2010. The state legislature then passed a law limiting over-the-counter sales of methamphetamine precursors by pharmacies to reduce meth production and use. The law reduced the problem, but Kaine said many users switched to imported meth or other drugs.
“We dealt with a symptom and we didn’t deal with the causes,” he told the panel, which included medical providers, mental health professionals and activists along with Loudoun County Board of Supervisors Chair Phyllis Randall, D-At Large, and Loudoun County Public Schools Superintendent Aaron Spence. “We really are in need of talking about causes. We’re not going to arrest our way out of the problem.”
Kaine said “tragic demand” for illegal drugs in the United States has been deadly for Central Americans and Mexicans as drug gangs wreak havoc. Some 30,000 Mexicans have been killed annually in drug-related violence since 2018, according to the Council on Foreign Relations Center for Preventive Action, and Kaine said the violence exacerbates migration at the U.S. border.
“The pain that causes people to leave their communities to come to our border is related to our pain,” he said. “The pain of a population that wants to find substances and has problems with substance use disorders.”
The roundtable came a decade into the national opioid epidemic. About 68% of the roughly 107,000 fatal overdoses in the U.S. in 2022 were opioid-related, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Local overdoses mirror the national trend.
Excluding Leesburg, there were 22 fatal overdoses and 111 non-fatal reported overdoses in Loudoun County last year through Dec. 19, according to the county Sheriff’s Office. Of the 22 deaths, 18 were opioid-related. Of the 111 non-fatal overdoses, 70 were opioid-related.
In Leesburg, for all of 2023, the Leesburg Police Department responded to 30 overdoses, five of which were fatal, according to LPD spokesman Officer Michael Drogin. Nine of the overdoses, including three of the deaths, were opioid-related.
The epidemic has been exacerbated by fentanyl. The drug’s precursors are often developed in labs in China and then sent to Mexico, where they have been used frequently in recent years to press counterfeit pills resembling oxycodone or Percocet pills.
Young people are increasingly ingesting the pills and overdosing. From 2019 through 2021, the Sheriff’s Office responded to eight juvenile overdoses, all non-fatal in Loudoun County. But in 2022, deputies responded to 19, including two deaths. Last year through Dec. 19, they responded to 22 overdoses, all non-fatal.
The school division dealt with an outbreak of suspected overdoses at Park View High School in Sterling in October, with overdoses suspected at several other county high schools. Spence said there are student assistance specialists at all LCPS middle and high schools to help students with drug and mental health problems. He said the division has an “incredible team” helping students, but the problem is overwhelming, exacerbated by academic pressures, social media, and the lack of beds for young people who need treatment for mental illness or drug addiction.
“When our families need support, very often, they can’t find it,” Spence said. “In Northern Virginia, there are virtually no beds for children.”
Spence said there need to be more regional “recovery schools” for students with drug problems to allow them to get more intensive help before returning to their regular schools. The Chesterfield Recovery Academy is the only recovery school in Virginia.
“There are things we can and should be doing, but we need more help,” Spence said. “We need more places with expertise to help our kids with the expertise we don’t have.”
Those with the expertise are sometimes people in long-term recovery, including peer-recovery specialists, who work with people new to sobriety, according to the panelists at the Jan. 8 meeting. In Virginia, peers undergo 72 hours of training through the Virginia Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Services. They must have 500 hours of paid or volunteer work in the peer recovery field to become certified.
At the federal level, Kaine has co-sponsored the Providing Empathetic and Effective Recovery (PEER) Support Act designed to make it easier for peer counselors to become certified. Supporters of the bill, which hasn’t passed the full Senate, say a criminal record shouldn’t disqualify a peer from becoming certified.
“You can study this for 20 years, but if you haven’t been there, you just don’t get it,” she said. “People with lived experience have more drive, more passion, more resourcefulness than anyone else in this field.”
The Atwood staff includes Daniel Adams, a senior peer and community liaison. Adams is in long-term recovery and became a certified peer after being imprisoned from 1990 to 2020.
Adams, Atwood Lovitt and other panelists noted relapses are often part of recovery and stressed the need for wraparound services, including more detoxification centers, medication-assisted treatment (MAT), and stable housing. They also emphasized the need to destigmatize addiction and mental illness so people who need treatment won’t be ashamed to seek help.
“It’s important to give them hope and for them to feel the love,” Adams said. “To know that somebody cares, no matter what position or situation that they’re in.”