One Minnesota Town May be Winning the Battle Against Opiate Addiction
Over the past few years, plenty of solutions have been put forward seeking to help the United States recover from the current opioid crisis, but not all of them have been found to be effective. One small town in Minnesota seems to have found a way of winning the fight against opioid dependency.
Little Falls, MN has thrown significant money at the opioid crisis, as has scores of cities and states all across the US. Unlike many areas across the country, Little Falls may be making some headway through a few key initiatives.
One of the Key Steps to Solving the Opioid Crisis Seems to Involve Treating Addicts Like People Not Criminals
The first step for Little Falls was to stop treating opioid dependency as a crime. The authorities instead decided to take the vital step of recognizing that opioid dependency is a disease.
Since 2014 Little Falls has spent $1.4 million in state grants on the opioid problem with the focus on three key areas:
- limiting ‘automatic’ opioid-based painkiller prescription refills
- increasing access to medicines that can help addiction
- placing opioid users who have broken the law on recovery programs
The progress that has been made since this change in attitude and the accurate expenditure of allotted funds has been encouraging. For several months the largest number of emergency room visits to the main Little Falls hospital – St Gabriel’s – were from people seeking to obtain opioid-based painkillers. Within six months of the new measures being introduced this occurrence had dropped below the top twenty causes for emergency room visits.
Little Falls has Shown How People Struggling with Opioid Addiction Should be Treated
There are now one hundred people at St Gabriel’s who are on addiction medication, and over six hundred people who have been successfully tapered off from their opioid dependency.
“One thing led to another,” said Dr. Kurt DeVine at St. Gabriel’s. “We realized we had to do a lot of things we weren’t doing, and that we had to do them together, or it wasn’t going to work.”
It is estimated that opioids are responsible for the deaths of over 75,000 people in the USA each year, which is more than are killed by guns or auto accidents. Cities all over the nation should take note of this success story in the great state of Minnesota.
If you or a loved one is struggling with a dependency on opioids, then please reach out to us at Advanced Rapid Detox for help. We offer a three day rapid opiate detox which is a revolutionary way to rid yourself of your opioid addiction without the painful withdrawal symptoms that cause many individuals to go back to these addictive substances. To learn more, reach out by phone at (800) 603-1813 or through our online contact form.
