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Charles City police take steps to fight what they see as growing opioid problem

  • A bottle of 4 mg of Narcan nasal spray. The spray is carried by Charles City police in their squad cars to battle narcotics overdoses. Press photo by Thomas Nelson

  • Officer John Jenkins holds a bottle of Narcan nasal spray. The spray is carried by Charles City police in their squad cars to battle overdoses. Press photo by Thomas Nelson

By Thomas Nelson, tnelson@charlescitypress.com

The Charles City Police Department is now carrying Narcan nasal spray to combat opiate overdoses, to be ready to fight a problem that officers say is growing in the community.

Around the United States, police departments are combating opioid addictions and overdoses, and police are trying to find ways to save lives while enforcing the law.

“We just added Narcan to our med kits that we carry in all our squad cars so that if there is an overdose we have that to help,” said Charles City Police Captain Brandon Franke.

The Narcan is sprayed into the nose and will have an almost instantaneous effect.

Opioids cover a wide range, including illegal drugs like heroin as well as prescription medicines like OxyContin, Vicodin, codeine and fentanyl.

Perscription opioids are prevalent in Charles City, said Charles City Police Chief Hugh Anderson.

“We end up finding opioids on a lot of different avenues,” Anderson said. “Young kids have had them, all the way up to adults and everything else.”

The Charles City police get a lot of reports of prescription opioids getting stolen out of medicine cabinets, Anderson said, usually by someone in the household.

“We have a direct take-back program to keep these (prescription opioids) out of kids’ hands or anybody’s hands,” Anderson said.

A container is in the City Hall lobby but outside the Charles City police station to collect unused or expired medications.

“We get a ton,” Franke said.

There once was a large bottle of hydrocodone put in the container.

“A lot of people tear off their labels,” Anderson said. “We don’t use that as an investigative tool at all because we’d rather people turn stuff in.”

A lot of times when someone is charged with having an illegal narcotic, that person will also be charged with carrying a prescription illegally, Anderson said.

“If you or I take and leave our house with our prescription, they have to be in the bottle with the prescription label on them,” Anderson said.

Technically even a daily pill case would be illegal.

“Most of the time those don’t leave the house,” Anderson said. “If you’re carrying something on your person, that needs to be in the original prescription bottle.”

“There aren’t a lot of illegal opioids” in the community, Anderson said. “Prescription abuse is by far the most. I couldn’t even guess the prescription abuse.”

Prescription drug abuse is something that’s a taboo subject in society, he said.

“We want to brush it underneath the carpet and say, ‘we don’t want to see this,'” Anderson said. “What we don’t realize is that it’s coming into our towns and our houses and our families.

“We don’t realize that our kids are taking it out of medicine cabinets and selling them and giving them to friends,” he said.

Anderson and Franke have each been police officers for 20-some years.

Pills weren’t as prevalent when they first started as they are now, they said.

“I think it’s always been an issue since the beginning of prescription pills, but it seems more prevalent now,” Franke said.

Anderson said he thinks methamphetamine use is on the decline.

“It’s harder to get anhydrous and it’s harder to get Sudafed,” Anderson said, referring to ingredients commonly used to “cook” meth.

Prescription opioid abuse has been called a nationwide epidemic, and 36 counties in Iowa have joined in a lawsuit against opioid manufacturers, but not Floyd County.

The lawsuit was filed Friday, Jan. 5, by three law firms from Wisconsin and Illinois.

The Iowa State Association of Counties board of directors had urged Iowa counties to join the lawsuit to recoup some of what it says has been billions of dollars spent nationwide in health insurance, criminal justice and substance abuse costs.

In January the three-member Floyd County board voted unanimously to turn down a resolution of support for the lawsuit, after briefly discussing whether the resolution could be amended to recognize that there is a national opioid abuse problem, but that it is not a significant problem in Floyd County.

“It’s bigger than us,” Anderson said. “We’ve had people steal fentanyl patches from people dying of cancer.”

Anderson said he thinks Charles City is going to see more prescription abuse in the future.

“I don’t believe that this is going to be something that’s just going to level off,” Anderson said. “I believe we’re going to see more and more of it in the schools.”

Education about the potential hazards of prescription opioid abuse is going to be an important tool in preventing it from spreading.

“It’s hard to care about what you see on the news until it affects your family, it affects your neighbor, it affects your community,” Anderson said.

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