Last year, public health officials in Virginia declared a public health emergency — the dramatically increasing opioid epidemic that continues to spiral out of control. As Michael Pope tells us, it’s an issue that has the attention of lawmakers in Richmond.
Delegate John Bell of Chantilly -- a career military officer — said he had never been around addiction before, so he didn’t recognize the signs in his own son who got hooked on painkillers after a car accident. He shared the experience with fellow lawmakers Thursday during a presentation on the opioid crisis.
“Every year we’d go on family vacation. Three days into the vacation, my son would get sick. He was sick because he didn’t have the drugs he was addicted to to keep taking. And there were other signs along the way. He would eat a lot of candy, which is another sign of people who have opioid addiction. Excessive sweating,” recalls Bell.
State Health Commissioner Marissa Levine also spoke to lawmakers, describing one of the consequences of injecting drugs: the dramatic rise in Hepatitis C. Delegate John O'Bannon of Richmond said he was having a hard time wrapping his head around some of the stats.
“If I saw that slide right, somewhere between a half of percent and one percent of every citizen in Southwest Virginia is Hep C positive," O'Bannon commented.
"And that may be an underestimate," replied Levine.
Some of the potential fixes under consideration this year: instituting dosage limits for prescribers … and instituting an online database to crack down on fraudulent prescriptions.
