NORTHEAST, PA — Residents of the Upper Delaware Valley know that heroin use is a problem locally. Rebecca Pisall, 20, of North Branch, NY was shot dead by her 51-year-old uncle on June 20 during a dispute about a heroin buy.

The heroin epidemic has grown dramatically over the years in Pennsylvania as it has across the country, and the Center for Rural Pennsylvania set out to study the matter and come up with strategies to battle it.

A final report was issued on September 24, at a press conference presided over by Sen. Gene Yaw, the chair of the center.

Yaw ticked off a number of statistics. He said, “Eighty percent of heroin abusers started with prescription drug abuse; 70% of those in prison have a treatable substance abuse problem; heroin is cheaper and easier for young people to obtain than alcohol; we have resources to treat one in eight people with an addiction problem.”

Yaw said one way to think of treating heroin addiction was to compare it to the treatment of diabetes. He said our society does not send diabetics to a hospital for 30 days and then declare them cured.

The report said that law enforcement officials, from local police and county judges to the state police and Pennsylvania’s attorney general, were united in their position that Pennsylvania must strengthen its efforts to combat the heroin crisis that has spread across and impacted the Commonwealth. It was evident from the testimony that: the trafficking of heroin has reached rural Pennsylvania in alarming ways; the criminal justice system is inundated; county prisons have become detox units; and law enforcement and criminal justice resources are understaffed and underfunded.”

The report recommends a multi-pronged approach to battling the issue of heroin and prescription opioids modeled on an approach developed by an organization called Project Lazarus. It stresses that many segments of the community need to be involved in the effort.

There were four public hearings held in various parts of the state before the report was prepared, and the panel heard numerous experts say in order to get treatment the “patient needs to be alive.” Therefore the report recommend the wider application of the drug naloxone.

Naloxone is an opioid and heroin antidote, which almost immediately reverses the physical effects of heroin and opioids, and can save the life of an addict suffering an overdose. One expert said that the drug should be “in the hands of those most likely to witness an overdose: friends and family.”

Another recommendation in the report is that the state set up an online drug registry, as New York State has done, which will allow healthcare professionals to determine if a patient is doctor shopping in order to receive multiple prescriptions for addictive opioid drugs such as Oxycontin and Oxycodone.

The full report can be accessed at www.rural.palegislature.us.