When private pain becomes a community problem

Overall, the response to the epidemic in the West has been a “whack-a-mole approach,” Susan Kingston, coordinator for the Alcohol and Drug Abuse Institute at the Center for Opioid Safety Education in Seattle, told me. “We’re trying to make any change we can. Big solutions are happening, but they are slow and need a lot of money and political commitment.” In September 2016, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services established $11 million in grants for Colorado, among 10 other states, to expand rehabilitation services for those with opioid addiction disorders. The state has among the highest treatment rates, according to SAMHSA, and so far has received more than $51 million in federal grants to fight addiction. Yet the problem stubbornly persists. In Craig, heroin abuse has jumped. From the time High Country Medical closed, in 2012, to 2015, heroin busts went up 70 percent, from 36 to 121, according to estimates from the Colorado Department of Justice