Breaking the chain: The opioid crisis in Ohio
Navigating addiction and prevention at the local and state level
By Allison Lee
Miami University journalism student
Elias (Eli) Weinstock’s loved ones say he was a bright young man. A Columbus native, Weinstock had big dreams and was a sophomore marketing and communications student at American University in Washington D.C., hoping to one day work in copywriting.
He loved all things dance, Legos and cinema. He cherished his friends, family and his academics according to his parents — he was a true family man.
Weinstock had a happy childhood — one that consisted of family vacations, playing lots of tennis and hanging out with his best friends.
Weinstock’s life ended on March 3rd, 2021, due to a fentanyl overdose.
According to the CDC, fentanyl is a synthetic opioid that is up to 50 times stronger than heroin and 100 times stronger than morphine.
According to his parents, on a whim Weinstock took what he thought was a Percocet. While Percocets contain oxycodone, a pain reliever, the one Weinstock took was a sham that was bought from an unreliable street dealer, according to his friends.
“He was never the type to do any sort of drugs,” Eli’s cousin Della Johnson says. “He wasn’t an addict. He just made an awful decision.”
According to the CDC, opioid usage in Ohio has increased since 2016. In 2016, Ohio had 3,615 opioid related overdose deaths compared to the 2,500 in 2015.
And if the heroin and opioid epidemic in America was not bad enough, the risk of drugs being laced with fentanyl has led to a greater conversation about opioid use — how to keep people safe and educated, as well as making sure people living with addiction are being as healthy as they can be.
Keller Stout is a harm reduction specialist with Butler County. Butler County is just one county out of 32 in Ohio that provides syringe service programs, or SSPs, according to Harm Reduction Ohio.
“Current addicts will come to our trailer…they’ll give us their used needles and get fresh new ones in return,” Stout says. “We also provide other things like fentanyl test strips, Narcan and also some fun things like nail polish just to make their days brighter.”
There are two locations that are running in Butler County in Fairfield and Oxford. The Oxford location just opened in September 2023.
“Things have been pretty successful,” Stout says. “We have had [63] new people sign up to use this program since we’ve opened. Our Middletown location was our busiest, but since it closed more people are coming over to Oxford.”
The SSP service that runs in Oxford is a one-to-one service — meaning, people using these services are required to provide used needles to get new ones. Butler County’s Middletown location, which closed in September 2023, was fair game — no old needles were required.
“I don’t want to say people are scared [to come to the Oxford location], but if people who drive themselves get pulled over, if they have their used needles in the car they would get arrested. It’s 90 days per needle found, and usually people exchange more than just one,” Stout says.
According to the Ohio Revised Code, people who use SSP services are legally protected within 1,000 feet of the service location with their SSP documentation, meaning they cannot be arrested for needles or paraphernalia. In Oxford, this means that High Street — one of the most important roads needed to access the SSP location — is just shy of the jurisdiction.
“It makes it hard for people who are coming from the Middletown location to get to us in Oxford,” Stout says. “If I thought about everyone who I’ve talked to who we haven’t seen in a while I would probably cry myself to sleep every night just worrying.”
The Middletown location shutting down was a blow to the Harm Reduction unit.
“The reason Middletown shut down was because it was supposed to be temporary and it lasted four years,” Stout says.
“People in Middletown just didn’t agree with what we were doing. They’d say we were enabling them, but I have a different take on it … we’re enabling them to make healthier choices, even if it isn’t the healthiest. If we didn’t have these services, I can’t say with 100 percent certainty, but I’d guess that the HIV rates would go up … you know, if people were just sharing needles or reusing them or finding old ones that aren’t safe. And that’s another thing, if someone is that deep into their addiction, they will find a way to get high, safe or not.”
Oxford Police Chief John Jones is familiar with Butler County, and is familiar with the harm reduction team. Since starting with the police in 2002, Jones has seen and dealt with citizens in various stages of addiction.
“What we most commonly saw was meth,” Jones says. “Meth and possibly crack cocaine was still around then. But it has definitely evolved … it took several years before we saw it in Oxford, but we started seeing heroin.”
The use of these opioids has developed rapidly, especially in Cincinnati — just 40 miles south of Oxford. Cincinnati has a unique proximity to two major interstates, I-75 and I-71, making it a prime location for drug trafficking according to WCPO Cincinnati.
“And then what’s probably 2016, 2017, we really saw a spike in drug overdoses and we had some fatal drug overdoses that we had not really experienced before. So that opioid epidemic really started to show its face here in Oxford,” Jones says.
The effects of these heavy drugs have taken a toll on greater Cincinnati and the surrounding areas.
Sergeant Adam Price of the Oxford Police Department supervises criminal investigations and is well-versed on the opioid epidemic.
“The heroin started to show itself around 2010, 2011. And that has probably something to do with the prescription pills that people were on,” Price says. “The Oxycontins.”
Oxycontin is similar to Percocet, the very thing Eli Weinstock overdosed on.
Beth Weinstock is Eli Weinstock’s mother. She started BirdieLight, a national non-profit providing awareness and education around the dangers of fentanyl after her son’s death.
“What we do with BirdieLight is offer outreach programs to the youth,” Weinstock says. “We also offer resources like test strips and Narcan training.”
Naloxone, better known by its brand name Narcan, is a medicine that can reverse the effects of opioid overdoses.
Narcan comes in the form of a nasal spray — according to the Mayo Clinic, you tilt the patients head back while supporting their neck and spray the Narcan into their nose. Narcan is single-use, however, meaning that it cannot be tested before administration.
Narcan training and accessibility is somewhat of a controversial topic. In March of 2023, Narcan became available over the counter, according to the Food and Drug Administration. On one hand, the availability of Narcan gives people the opportunity to get clean.
“The negative is, you know, is it encouraging someone to do it because it’s right there?” Jones says. “I’m not sure that they would not do it without it, but I think it has saved lives. And many more people are much more knowledgeable about its use.”
Addiction is a complex labyrinth of a subject — the intricacies and lack of understanding create a stigma so intense that many do not see the bigger picture, according to Miami University sophomore psychology student Connor Davis.
“People often assume that addicts choose addiction,” Davis says. “That just isn’t the truth. Things like repeated exposure, if there’s an addiction gene in the family and even trauma can all lead to addiction.”
According to the Partnership to End Addiction, addiction is defined as a disease. Behavioral, genetic, psychological and environmental factors all contribute to addictions.
“Addiction doesn’t just pick and choose who to affect, it could happen to anyone,” Stout says. “A lot of people think addicts are all evil people, but we have so many people using our services. Some people will be unhoused coming to us, but we have some people drive here in a big car with Gucci purses. So there isn’t just one way to classify an addict.”
With harder drugs, like opioids, the threshold for addiction increases.
“Opioid addiction can be seen as a Sisyphean battle,” Davis says. “Opioids change the brain’s reward system in a way that releases so much dopamine to the point where the physical dependency is debilitating.”
Going to more traditional forms of rehabilitation for addiction can be daunting, especially for those who are in the throes of it all.
“I’ve had people tell me that they would go [to rehab] if they were at least allowed to smoke weed and go about their day, but they don’t allow you to do that,” Stout says. “So whether they aren’t ready to be entirely sober or, honestly, not interested in rehab, they’ll just continue to get their fix wherever they can find it.”
While the goal of rehab is to get an addict entirely clean, a more taboo approach has hit some U.S. cities — supervised drug injection sites. Supervised drug injection sites are centers with medical personnel where people can use drugs in a safe and regulated environment, according to the National Harm Reduction Coalition.
“They know exactly what they’re getting,” Stout says. “If you go to a bar and you order a vodka cran, you know you’re getting two shots of vodka and cranberry juice — it’s the same for these administration sites.”
Though the public may see these treatment options as unconventional, the impact they hold on those involved are immense.
From those who strive to help people in all walks of life to the people accessing these resources, bridging the gap between stigma and reality is only the first step of breaking the chains of a national crisis.
