MANHEIM, Pa. — Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) joined Lancaster County leaders on Monday to address the opioid crisis.
Public health officials hope to refocus on solutions to the opioid crisis after spending much of the past two years addressing the coronavirus pandemic.
The meeting with representatives from healthcare, law enforcement and local government comes as drug overdose deaths have risen in the county during the pandemic.
“The pandemic really led to isolation. Having connections for people, in particular in recovery, is so vital,” said Alice Yoder, executive director of community health for Lancaster General Hospital.
Lawmakers said their constituents reported that unemployment contributed to more people falling into addiction, as well as the stimulus checks that suddenly gave many the means to purchase more drugs.
“They would get these checks. They had nowhere to spend them. And a lot of them couldn’t get (access to) mental health,” said Priscilla Eberly, who attended the meeting in lieu of State Rep. Dave Zimmerman (R-Lancaster).
Sen. Toomey said in his 12 years in the Senate, the opioid crisis is the subject on which he’s spent the most time.
“The ubiquity of fentanyl together with the lockdowns of COVID kind of disrupted so much of the progress we were making and now I’m worried we’ve been heading in the wrong direction for a little while,” Toomey said.
For several years, the medical community has been moving toward prescribing fewer opioid painkillers.
“Reduced opioid prescribing is a good preventative measure. We’ll see the benefits of that 10 years from now,” said Dr. Jon Lepley, medical director of Penn Medicine’s addiction medicine department.
But fentanyl is the largest contributor to the current rise in overdoses, according to experts at the meeting. Since the people most likely to knowingly buy illicit fentanyl are already living with addiction, prevention efforts won’t help them.
“While we have to continue the fight on the supply side, ultimately this is a demand side problem,” Toomey said. “We have to help figure out how to keep people from seeking these deadly drugs.”
Toomey said mental healthcare is crucial to helping people out of addiction. He hopes to pass a bill that would connect Medicaid enrollees who overdose with treatment, as well as alert their healthcare providers of the overdose. He hopes to pass the measure before he retires from the Senate next year.