Haines Police Chief Heath Scott holds up the Narcan nasal spray he carries with him. Narcan is used to counteract opioid overdoses. (Emily Files)
The Public Safety Commission’s drug task force met Thursday evening to discuss data collection on substance abuse in the Haines Borough. In the coming months, the task force plans to collect information from a variety of organizations and agencies in Haines and present a plan to the assembly on how to address substance abuse across the borough.
Alaska’s drug problem is growing more severe. According to a report released by the Alaska State Troopers in September, the amount of heroin intercepted by police across the state doubled from 2016 to 2017. There was a fivefold increase in the amount of methamphetamine seized as well.
Last year, the Public Safety Commission broadened its scope to include substance abuse and created a drug task force to address the issue.
Public Safety Commissioner Patrick Hefley facilitated the first meeting of the drug task force Thursday. He has worked for Southeast Regional Health Consortium in several capacities, most recently as the administrative director for the Haines Clinic.
According to Hefley, the task force will carry out a three-step initiative to address drug use in Haines. The first step is to gather information.
“Data collection. What is the problem? What do we know? What can we do about it?” Hefley said. “And then, second, to see what initiatives might be appropriate to help. And then, did it help? Go back and look back at your data and see if it had the outcome you were looking for.”
Right now most people don’t have a clear picture of the impact of substance abuse on the community. Hefley says that is because even though the information is out there, it hasn’t been compiled across the various public health and emergency services operating in the borough.
“How many ambulance calls were related to that? How many health calls were related to that? How many social service entities were affected? How many mental health issues got affected? All these data sets sit outside of state government. Many of them do. So the goal is to look broadly at the community.”
Representatives from a number of local groups that deal with issues related to drug use turned up for the drug task force meeting Thursday. Participants ranged from Haines School Principal Renee Martin to Jackie Mazeikas, who runs the domestic violence safe house Becky’s Place. Local law enforcement and emergency service personnel were present as well.
Over the next few months, participants will review data related to substance abuse that have been collected by their organizations.
Once the data have been collected the task force will work to define what kinds of problems exist in Haines and eventually come up with an action plan to solve those problems.
Hefley says that interpreting the data will be the most difficult part.
“For example, if we find that there is very little opioid interdictions or opioid relatively speaking or few emergency room visits or we have a lot of them but it’s only five people, what does that say? Versus we have many more car accidents, domestic violence issues, some of the other things that are alcohol-related, what will that say? Does that mean we should ignore opioids? That’ll be, I think, some of the crux of the issue.”
The Public Safety Commission’s drug task force will meet again on December 5th to review the data collected on substance abuse in Haines.
