Tacoma-Pierce County Health Department announcement.
Substance misuse, overdoses and drug-related deaths continue to rise in Pierce County and around the state. The Tacoma-Pierce County Opioid Task Force remains committed to ending this crisis.
More than 100 people gathered last week, to partner and strategize to meet this goal. Tacoma-Pierce County Health Department, Pierce County, City of Tacoma, and Elevate Health comprise the Opioid Task Force with the support of many community partners.
This year’s Opioid Summit focused on creating a system of culture and care in our community.
It’s an important conversation. Your demographics, experiences, and cultural environment all affect your mental health and wellbeing. Poor mental health can lead to substance use disorder and other problems.
We’ve been at this work for 5 years.
In 2018, community members, invested stakeholders, educators, faith leaders, law enforcement and politicians came together to talk about the opioid crisis. Everyone agreed, it will take all of us to affect change.
That brought leaders like our Director of Health, Dr. Anthony L-T Chen, former Pierce County Councilmember and Board of Health Chair Derek Young, Tacoma Mayor Victoria Woodards and former Tacoma City Councilmember Connor McCarthy to create the Opioid Task Force.
Together, we quickly adopted a holistic approach. We know substance misuse affects families, loved ones and those who need direct services.
Now, we lead community events, work monthly to deliver subcommittee initiatives, and provide funding for projects like naloxone distribution and fentanyl awareness.
At this year’s summit we continued the conversation on subcommittee projects and other efforts. Pierce County Councilmember and Board of Health Vice Chair Jani Hitchen kicked off a conversation about how best to spend opioid settlement funds.
We honored Dr. Chen and former councilmember Young for their task force work over the past 5 years.
Deadly trend continues.
We updated our overdose dashboard last week ahead of the Summit. It shows the stark reality that deaths from drug overdoses now outnumber deaths from motor-vehicle collisions and firearm-related deaths in Pierce County.
What’s more, deaths from all drugs in Pierce County jumped significantly from pre-pandemic levels. Deaths from opioids spiked the most. Fentanyl-related deaths are growing most quickly among people ages 18-24 across Washington.
We need a path forward. That means a comprehensive and coordinated system, with everyone working together.
The Opioid Task Force works year-round to raise awareness, reduce stigma, improve health, and address many of the barriers for people with substance use disorder.
We focus on:
- Prevention.
- Education.
- Access to treatment.
- Offering the right services at the right time.
We need everyone’s help.
You can help! If you’d like to learn more or offer your support, email me at eallen@tpchd.org.
Mental Health First Aid can also teach you to see, understand and respond to signs of mental illness and substance use disorders. You can help your organization learn to focus on trauma informed care.
And if someone you know is struggling with opioid dependency, you can tell them about our treatment services.
You can also sign up for blog updates and other notifications and follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram to get our latest reliable information.
The firearms industry and shooting sports enthusiasts have done far more to promote safety and address gun violence than you are proposing for the drug epidemic, that is ravaging our neighborhoods.
If you were honest about public safety, you would publish the blood toxicology of these so-called mass shooters, whom you use to promote your war on the Constitution.
The vast majority of these shooters were loaded-up with “legal” as well as illegal mind-altering chemicals.
Those who profit from the manufacture and distribution of these drugs, buy entire campaigns and offices for those who will do their bidding.
There is no Constitutional right for someone to go through life high as a kite, inflicting harm on others.
There is however, a Constitutional right to defend ourselves from those who do.
The data is there for you, but you instead choose to create winners and losers based on a distorted logic which defies the very science you claim to follow.
Spinning up an entire industry, wholly funded by tax-payers, to perpetuate a societal melt down, while stripping away God-given individual rights, is about the worst example of governmental abuse one could ever imagine, yet that’s exactly how we got here.