The City of Owensboro and Daviess County Fiscal Court held a rare, joint work session Tuesday that highlighted the community’s options in addressing the ever-growing use of methamphetamine. The forum, called “Daviess County vs. Meth,” focused on statistics and funding opportunities to combat the ongoing crisis.
While other counties across Kentucky are battling the opioid epidemic, Daviess County has primarily been battling meth for the last two decades. RiverValley Behavioral Health Senior Director of Substance Abuse Services RonSonlyn Clark told commissioners that one meth addict drains the local community of $670,067 over the course of 10 years.
Owensboro Police Department’s Sergeant Michael Nichols said OPD has seen an exponential increase in meth laced with fentanyl over the last year. OPD has seized 18.3 pounds of meth in 2019, which is up from 14.1 pounds seized in 2018 and 8.94 pounds seized in 2017.
Nichols estimated that only 10 percent of meth in the City is seized by OPD.
“The amount of dope that comes into Owensboro — the numbers are staggering,” he said. “No area of Owensboro is devoid of the problem when it comes to meth.”
Clark said it would take a three-pronged effort to truly decrease the amount of meth on the streets and get more people into a pattern of successful rehabilitation: prevention, treatment and law-enforcement.
City and County leaders have been working to find solutions to this major drug issue and discovered a number of federal grants that could benefit Daviess County in the war against meth.
Owensboro/Daviess County is eligible for at least six different federal grants that can be used for numerous entities, including law enforcement programs, drug treatment programs, prosecution and court programs, crime victim and witness programs and much more. The funding for these grants totals hundreds of millions of dollars and are awarded to applicants, including local governments, annually.
“Funding for methamphetamine initiatives is scarce, so it’s vital for our community to distinguish priorities and a collaborative action plan to combat Daviess County’s most urgent threats,” said Mayor Tom Watson.
Family Court Judge Julie Hawes Gordon said upwards of 90 percent of the cases in her courtroom revolve around meth use. OPD and the Daviess County Sheriff’s Office are picking people up every day with meth-induced psychosis, and those people can’t be evaluated by RiverValley when they’re intoxicated, so, essentially, they’re taken to the Daviess County Detention Center. Jailer Art Maglinger said DCDC was equipped to handle those with mental health disorders, but that bringing them to jail wasn’t preferable.
Daviess County has seven sober living houses, six licensed treatment facilities, Owensboro Regional Recovery and dozens of Alcoholics/Narcotics Anonymous classes held each week, but Clark told commissioners that “a social detox program is missing here.”
A social detox program would allow meth users to catch up on sleep, eat some food, and be lightly educated on the options available to them. Clark said 50 percent of those who attend a social detox program go on to get longer-term treatment.
“I think it’s something that’s needed here,” she said. “I hope that it’s one of the things a grant could help with.”
Clark and Nichols also agreed that increasing drug court programs could benefit the area as well, as 55 of 154 who’ve entered have successfully graduated.
“Our goal is to get them off the ferris wheel. We continue to see the same faces over and over again. Locking them up and throwing away the key isn’t working,” Nichols said, adding that law enforcement would benefit from more funding for overtime and better resources that would help with the technological aspect of the crisis.
“Its changed,” he said of the ways users are obtaining meth. “These guys are using social media to solicit it from guys across the country. They’re using the postal service and UPS to ship this by the package.”
Clark said she estimated that around 5,000 Daviess County residents were regularly using meth. Judge-Executive Al Mattingly said the money currently spent on recidivism and recycling meth users through the courts and jail systems could be better spent on providing treatment.
City Commissioner Larry Conder said he believes Owensboro/Daviess County will not only apply for all six grants, but that there’s a good chance they’ll be awarded most of them. Conder also said he hopes some of that grant money can go toward hiring a drug director, someone who could oversee the grant-writing and application process in the future and be in charge of making the battle against meth a reality.
Years ago, the Alliance for a Drug-Free Owensboro and Daviess County had plans to hire a drug director, but those plans fell through due to a lack of funding, Conder said.
“Putting the legislation together, applying for these grants, and then reporting mechanisms on a consistent basis — these actions could be a full-time job, if we’re willing to do this,” he said. “The mayor’s connections to Senator Mitch McConnell has been huge in giving us this opportunity to apply for these grants, and seeing these grant opportunities come to Owensboro is a game-changer.”
