With opioid abuse on the rise in much of Virginia, one of the hardest hit cities is Danville where the addiction rate is 25-percent higher than the statewide average. While opioid addiction has some things in common with other addictions there are also significant differences.
Danville has seen some lean years since the turn of the century as its tobacco and textile industries have all but disappeared leaving behind high unemployment, low wages and growing poverty.
It's the kind of environment in which drug abuse often takes hold and opioid addiction has done just that. But unlike cocaine or heroin, opioids are legal prescription painkillers. And a user's first encounter is rarely on the street.
“ In Danville most common users we see re not involved with gangs and things like that. They most often started from doctors' prescriptions,” says Dr. Bill Trost.
Trost is with Danville-Pittsylvania Community Services. He says patients can become addicted through their own prescriptions, and when those prescriptions run out.
“The majority of the patients I'm seeing are getting them from family or from other people who are getting them from doctors and then selling them in turn on the street.”
Amanda Oakes is a prevention specialist for Community Services whose job is complicated by the fact that it's hard to identify those who are most likely to become addicted.
“It's not necessarily people that are what we would typically deem as high risk,” Oakes says.
So prevention strategy has to be broad-based. And it begins on the supply side.
“We have been working to create permanent drop-off sites for prescription medication, we distribute kits where they can put their medication in the kits and it'll destroy it.”
Of course that, and all-important educational outreach, costs money. And in Danville there's not always enough to go around. The city will be receiving a share of a federal grant designed to help fight opioid addiction.
