In an effort to combat the rising number of heroin-related deaths, Governor Terry McAuliffe signed Executive Order 29 last September, establishing the Governor’s Task Force on Prescription Drug and Heroin Abuse. The group was formed to reverse the growing death toll from heroin overdose, which has doubled in the last two years in Virginia.
Chelyen Davis, communications advisor for the Virginia Secretariat of Health and Human Resources, said one of the biggest contributing factors leading to heroin addiction is unnecessary and excessive consumption of prescription painkillers, or opioids. As the availability of prescription drugs decline, people often switch to heroin.
“From 2007 to 2013, nearly 70 percent of all drug [and] poison deaths were attributed to opioids,” Davis said in an email. “In Virginia, overdose deaths are now more common than traffic accident deaths.”
Davis said abuse of the drug was not uniform across the state. According to a report released by the state government, while southwestern Virginia also suffers from heroin usage, central and eastern Virginia have the highest number of heroin overdoses.
“The problem is different in some regions of the state than in others, but it is a concern statewide,” Davis said. “It’s such a devastating problem, in both fiscal and human cost, that Governor McAuliffe made it a part of his A Healthy Virginia report, a 10-point plan designed to address significant health needs that are affecting Virginians.”
The task force is meant to address heroin issues across the state, chiefly through expanding methods for safer storage and proper disposal of prescription drugs, working on law enforcement to implement best practices when responding to persons addicted to opioids and providing greater access to abuse treatment services.
“The task force has five work groups, each with a distinct set of focus areas — Education, Enforcement, Storage and Disposal, Data and Monitoring and Treatment,” Davis said. “The task force will develop recommendations for the governor as to the best approaches to stemming the overdose and addiction problems in Virginia.”
Among the task force’s members are representatives from the Commonwealth legislature and judiciary, the Office of the Attorney General, health and behavioral health care professionals, community advocates, state and local agents and individuals who personally suffered addiction.
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