LIHUE — The state Department of Health has received $2.1 million in federal grant funds, in addition to an initial $8 million grant received last year, to address and prevent the opioid crisis in Hawaii.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services recently announced this second installment of funding for state opioid response grants. A total of $487 million is being granted directly to states to continue combatting the ongoing opioid crisis.
The funding will expand access to treatment that works, especially medication-assisted treatment with appropriate social supports.
“I’m very pleased Hawaii has received this additional funding to support the implementation of our comprehensive plan to fight opioid misuse,” said Gov. David Ige. “We appreciate the strong support from our federal partners and believe we’ll continue to be successful because all stakeholders are working closely together to achieve success.”
Hawaii’s opioid death rates have historically been lower than the national rate, but through 2018, the incidence of drug-related deaths in the state has surpassed traffic fatalities in Hawaii. Fortunately, death rates have declined since the initiative was launched, with more than 120 overdose reversals through administration of naloxone in the last year.
The action areas identified in the plan include:
w Improving and modernizing healthcare strategies and access to opioid and other substance misuse treatment and recovery services;
w Improving prescribing practices among healthcare providers and health insurance companies for opioid and other potentially addictive medications;
w Improving community-based programs and public education to prevent opioid misuse, such as the Hawaii Medication Drop Box Program that was launched in July 2018 as a result of the support of the state Department of the Attorney General, Department of Public Safety, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and the Honolulu, Hawaii, Maui and Kauai police departments.
Eddie Mersereau, state DOH deputy director of Behavioral Health, said, “In Hawaii, we all know a relative or friend who has been affected by drug misuse or addiction, including those who were taking a prescribed opioid as directed for pain relief. The social, economic and health disparities in our state, including access to behavioral health care, also make us particularly vulnerable to opioid and other drug misuse.”
The Hanapepe parks adjacent to the tennis courts are riff with pill and ice dealers night and day.
The police is aware and all neighbors are complaining, still nothing changes except for the worse.
The Hanapepe parks adjacent to the tennis courts are riff with pill and ice dealers night and day.
The police is aware and all neighbors are complaining, still nothing changes except for the worse.
Stop talking about the issue and fix it!!!
Dr. Robinson is correct! The Hanapepe tennis court area is a drug dealer’s haven. I’ve seen them passing
drugs and cash back and forth in broad daylight down there. Where is the drug task force? Where are the cops? This stuff is going on with little kids running around just a few feet away.
That’s my brothers sisters cousins trying to make a living says the police. A better idea might be to legalize drugs and encourage the children with the arts, sports and the general hope of a good life. Pay the teachers a real living wage and cut the buerecrats do nothing salaries if you don’t want another generation of drug addicts. Or don’t……
Wailua Homesteads I hear is getting bad too.
Kulana Development should be investigated.
Rumors of people growing poppie plants in the mountains of Kauai.
Aloha Kakou,
It’s amazing that the initial and ongoing cause of this nationwide and Hawaii opioid addiction is the irresponsible education and practice of the medical doctors where it is a pill for every ill. To medical doctors Pain is a simple treatment …prescribe pain pills, the most common are a variety of opioids, and as M.D.’s don’t refer patients to alternative natural and non opioid health care practitioners and and are taught to never let patients get away from the petrochemical drug companies and the medicines they push by the doctors, because when patients get results from non drug therapies they do not return to the chemical companies’ medical doctors.
Drug companies and medical doctors are 2 peas in the same pod, and they are the biggest part of the $4 Trillion dollars a year in medical drug sales’ profit along with some of those monies where the drugs failed and surgery was resorted to, and even a large amount of those surgeries fail too.
Just think if the chemical companies ran out of petroleum (car oil) and thus run out of the petrochemical medicines that are made from the oil, the medical profession would collapse. Just like literally running out of gas in your car…it would come to a complete stop.
It’s unbelievable but the chemical companies are still making and having their doctors sell for them drugs that kill you, whether it be the opioids or the other prescription medicines that are so toxic that the TV ads say you can die from them, or suffer any one of a dozen or so horrible side effects, forcing people to take additional drugs to counteract the ones prescribed already.
Don’t we deserve better as a society.
In the history of the human race until recently, i.e., in the last several generations, humans were never exposed to drugs, especially the petrochemical ones to day made from motor oil. The side effects has caused a rush to develop and patent more and more drugs to relieve the side effects the earlier drugs brought in. It’s a never ending continuum. And 1/2 of America is trapped in the prescription drug world., 55% of our nation taking 4 prescription drugs a day.
The disappointment of the drug industry is that when a patient dies from overdose or any reason, the bummer is they have lost an ongoing lifetime client…called patients. Heroin dealers suffer the same loss of client disappointment when their clients overdose.
Statistics clearly show that the more medical drugs there are and chemicals in the environment and in our food, that there are more incidence of chronic, long term, degenerative disease…heart and stroke disease, cancers, Broken Brains with Alzheimer’s and dementia, depression and suicide, kidney and liver failure, and a host of others. Chemicals and drugs were never meant for humans according to the failure of our bodies to tolerate them. Wil we ever learn, guess not so long as profit is made. Do you think rich doctors will ever be commonly called poor doctors?
So is there a solution…well some countries have severe and immediate (in)justice, a final goodbye in a moments notice.
But there is an alternative it is called WORK…hard work 7 days a week taking in only clean water and chemical free food to detoxify each person. After months or even years of hard work 7 days a week and 10 to 12 hours a day clean and sober, the patient will be able to be able to not only work hard but also appreciate too getting paid to work 5 days a week at normal hours.
Hard work makes more sense than incarceration, its rehabilitative benefits are genuine and lasting. And if they fail put them back in the unpaid government work force until they are successful and drug and alcohol sober.
Worth a try, nothing else has worked so far. Hard work prepares people for hard work. Incarceration prepares people for sitting down with drugs and a welfare check.
Charles