The Addicted and the Church
Late last week President Trump formally declared the opioid addiction epidemic in America a National Public Health Emergency. The opioid drug commission under the direction of New Jersey Governor Chris Christie made the recommendation to the White House earlier this year. Gov. Christie stated to the President that shining a light on the crisis in this way is the best decision in order to get this problem the attention required to battle it. The Governor also commended the President on the “bold action” that he took last Thursday (Firger).
By declaring the Opioid crisis a Health Emergency, something that needs to be addressed by using the Public Health Service Act, President Trump is throwing the power of the White House behind this issue. The President will also be calling upon the Health and Human Services to help in making decisions like opting to wave or modify some of the Governmental Healthcare requirements such as CHIP (Children’s Health Insurance Program) Medicare, and Medicaid, to get the help that the patient may need. States may also have easier access to Federal Public Health Funding, and there could be extensions granted or softer deadlines in the application processes for grants through SAMHSA (Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Association.) This is funding that is vitally needed on a more local level for families dealing with this devastating addiction (Stetzer).
How much will the battle on Opioid Addiction cost Americans? Researchers seeking to number it say, $51 billion! This is a figure that the University of Illinois at Chicago calculated and published in the Journal PLOS ONE. They creatively considered in detail all of the ways that active heroin users impact the U. S. economically. This is an epidemic of biblical proportions when you consider the impact on the American Healthcare System. But the unseen toll comes when all of the expenses are added together from the addict, to their family, to the local, state and federal organizations that are toting the bill. The number of addicted has grown exponentially and the addicted are dying from overdoses at a rate three times the number of heroin related deaths 15 years ago (Main).
First we must know that there are at least one million active users addicted to opioids as of May 2017, and we have to take into consideration the diseases that rear up because of the use of needles. These diseases include hepatitis C and B, HIV-AIDS, tuberculosis, and the treatments for neonatal abstinence syndrome, which is when the addicted mother carrying a child actually gets help to cease use of heroin while pregnant (Main). This count of the medical expenses does also include the babies that have been exposed to heroin during gestation. The researchers sought to place a number on the treatment of the addicted, and overdoses. Heroin has a wide and vast sweeping effect on the addicted and their families, especially children. One need only ask a few people within their circle of influence to realize just how close to home addiction to opioids/heroin is today.
Among these expenses we have the legal implications of addiction to opioids. An addict who is imprisoned for committing crimes which have heavy costs and longer sentences because of the desperation of them needing to get their drugs, automatically becomes a lower producer of positive work in society. These crimes include robbery, assault, possession of drugs and paraphernalia, DUI, and often sexual exploitation of themselves and others (prostitution) for currency in order to get their fix. The expense to the average worker for the keeping of ONE incarcerated addict can be calculated at $79,000 per year. This figure was arrived at by adding the following costs:
$ 31,000 incarceration costs
29,000 productivity loss
9,000 hepatitis C treatment tab (inevitable)
$ 79,000 TOTAL (if it stops there!)
Adding to this number the cost of HIV spreading rampantly because of heroin use, the total calculated cost of ONE heroin addict to the American society’s medical and legal system alone grows to the amount of $300,000 over a lifetime.
The median average salary of a worker in the U.S. is $51.272. The average heroin user will cost the U. S. monetary system annually $50,800. With these numbers in mind related to cost of incarceration of an addict, it makes sense to treat the addiction as a disorder, and a medical problem rather than a legal one in hopes of lowering the number of addicts in the revolving door of prison institutionalization (Firger). It is hoped that by declaring the heroin crisis accordingly, it will save the American society ALOT of money!
The societal burden of heroin addiction will only increase as this problem continues through ALL of society’s classes, races, employment positions, and generations. This disorder is no respecter of persons. The elevator stops at each and every floor. Any and all can fall prey to this addiction which often starts innocently enough with prescriptions for pain management from surgery, injury, or to treat chronic pain for many. Opioids, including drugs such as oxycodone, morphine, and fentanyl work in the system to relieve some of the absolute worst pain, but they also rapidly create dependence upon them. Once addicted, the body actually feels the pain until the drug is taken. When the very well-meaning surgeon or doctor cuts the patient off in order to prevent addiction, it is often too late.
Unfortunately, the street value of these drugs is profitable for the seller and someone who cannot convince their doctor to write a prescription will do anything possible to get these valuable drugs for their use or to sell for a generous profit. Personally, tales have crossed my circle of influence where grandchildren have taken their grandparents prescriptions and filled them for themselves. This addiction can make a desperate criminal out of the least likely persons, and some that you may know!
When the addict runs out of resources, what happens next? Well unfortunately the street drug market is all too welcoming to someone who needs a little lift. The trouble is, opioids come in all forms and the cheapest use is heroin used intravenously. One time…ONE TIME is all it takes. Truth. If you shoot heroin into your bloodstream ONCE, you will be addicted. If you do not get help to get off of it within two years, it is unlikely that you will ever get off of it. It will KILL you.
Nikki, our beautiful Niece changed once she became an addict. We would notice each time that we saw her that there was another piece of her soul missing. We eventually had to tell her that she and her friends were not welcome to come to our home because we no longer saw our angel faced Niece when we looked at her. We did not want our home to be a target for the robbery and conniving schemes that we knew addicts can conjure up. She would call us, all hours of the day and night in a moment of desperation and ask if we could come and pick her up, but when we made it clear that we would take her straight to detox, she would hang up.
She was jailed several times and “dried out” in prison. We silently hoped she would be picked up by the police because then she would be forced into the program and maybe, just maybe get the help she needed and remain clean. The last time she was in jail and her hearing came up, she had a list of priors a mile long. The Judge looked at her, crumpled the paper with all of her charges on it and said, “I am dropping all charges, you have a chance to go free and make this all right, or you can wind up dead!”
My Husband and I had the most horrific job you can imagine when we had to identify our Niece at a funeral home three days after she was found dead on Thanksgiving Day, 2007 from an overdose. The investigation by police made it so that we could not see her while they performed an autopsy and searched for evidence as to who sold drugs to her and how it happened. Her own Mother was not allowed to go and see her body because she might touch her and ruin the investigation. When we saw our 25 year old, beautiful Niece lying there on a metal table in a mortician’s workroom, it wounded us so deeply-penetrating our hearts in a way we have never experienced. The sadness is not explainable. This little angel faced niece that we took for pizza, to the beach, who loved animals and dreamed of being a Veterinary Technician, was gone. It was a little less than a year after the Judge made her jail sentence go away. She had a 7 year old Son, named Danny.
No one blames the Judge, he was doing what he deemed as fit, but if there were programs in place to deal with the institutionalized addict, she may have had a different story.
A very important question that must be asked is; what about the Church? How should the church get involved with this annihilation of our young, for barely a day goes by without another beautiful young person’s obituary reading the sad truth of a lost battle to addiction? There is no place that this problem does not touch. Rural America included. In fact our nation’s rural communities have been hit particularly hard, with many people having limited access to treatment centers. The addiction problem once thought to be an inner city problem, has grown in the country’s rural communities no matter how much we think we have put distance between “us” and “them” which includes the groups and labels we have developed to protect our families and values. Our denial is only perpetuating a huge problem and does not stop with our personal prejudices.
So, how does the average Christian person deal with the realities of the addicted among us, and our friends, relatives, co-workers in pain? Christians must first repent of the sin of turning their back on a problem to which we are called to be on the front lines making change happen. We must stop ignoring the multitude and their pain because they are not like us (Stetzer). We have the opportunity to bring Jesus’ love to people who have wound up (no matter how) trapped in bondage without judgement. As Christians we have the truth that true freedom is only in Jesus Christ. In Luke 4:18–19 (NLT) Jesus repeats Isaiah by proclaiming that he has come to set the captives free and bring hope to the oppressed. Jesus was not a sissy, he got his hands dirty. He was not afraid to enter the darkest places on the street and penetrate a person’s soul in order to bring deliverance and set a person on a path to victory. If we help just ONE, we have done a great work.
Works Cited
Firger, Jessica. “Trump Will Declare the Opioid Crisis a Public Health Emergency. What Does That Mean?” Newsweek, 26 Oct. 2017, www.newsweek.com/opioid-crisis-what-does-trump-mean-declare-national-public-health-emergency-693863.
Main, Douglas. “Each Year the Average Heroin User Costs Society Roughly the Same as the US Median Income.” Newsweek, 17 June 2017, www.newsweek.com/heroin-addiction-costs-us-more-50-billion-year-626983.
Stetzer, Ed. “A Public Health Emergency: The Opioid Crisis & Our Response.” The Exchange | A Blog by Ed Stetzer, Oct. 2017, www.christianitytoday.com/edstetzer/2017/october/public-health-emergency.html.
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