Public Hearing - May 8, 2014
1
1 BEFORE THE NEW YORK STATE SENATE MAJORITY COALITION
JOINT TASK FORCE ON HEROIN AND OPIOID ADDICTION
2 ------------------------------------------------------
3 PUBLIC FORUM: CAYUGA COUNTY
4 PANEL DISCUSSION ON AUBURN'S HEROIN EPIDEMIC
5 ------------------------------------------------------
6
Auburn City Hall Chambers
7 24 South Street
Auburn, New York 13021
8
May 8, 2014
9 1:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m.
10
11
PRESENT:
12
13 Senator Philip M. Boyle, Task Force Chairman
Chairman of the Senate Committee on Alcoholism and
14 Drug Abuse
15
Senator Michael Nozzolio, Task Force Forum Moderator
16 Member of the Joint Task Force
17 Senator Thomas O'Mara
Member of the Joint Task Force
18
Senator David Valesky
19 Member of the Joint Task Force
20 Assemblyman Gary Finch
21
22
23
24
25
2
1
PANELIST INTRODUCTIONS - FRONT TABLE PAGE 11
2
John Riccio
3 Chief Medical Officer
Auburn Community Hospital
4
Shakeel Usmani
5 Physician, Internal Medicine
and Emergency Medicine
6 Auburn Community Hospital
7 Ray Bizzari
Director
8 Cayuga County Mental Health Office
9 Kevin Hares
Executive Director
10 Confidential Help for Alcohol and Drugs, Inc.
11 Jon Budelmann
District Attorney
12 Cayuga County
13 David Gould
Sheriff
14 Cayuga County
15 Michael McKeon
Judge
16 Presiding over felony and misdemeanor drug courts
Auburn City Court
17
Brian Neagle
18 Police Chief
Auburn Police Department
19
20
PERSONAL STORIES PAGE 14
21
START OF PANELIST PARTICIPATION, PAGE 20
22 INCLUDING EXPERTS IN THE AUDIENCE
23 AUDIENCE PARTICIPATION AND Q&A PAGE 50
24
25 ---oOo---
3
1 SENATOR NOZZOLIO: Good afternoon, ladies and
2 gentlemen.
3 I'd like to call the meeting of the
4 New York State Senate Heroin Task Force to order.
5 It's extremely an honor to be -- please come
6 in, Doctor.
7 It's an honor for me to be here, and to sit
8 with my colleagues who have worked tirelessly across
9 the state over this last month.
10 Senator Boyle and I, for instance, were in
11 Manhattan a week ago today, to take testimony on
12 this very pervasive, yet extremely important issue.
13 Before I welcome my colleagues, I want to
14 indicate to them who we have in this audience.
15 It is a tremendous group of people who are
16 understanding of this problem, who have been dealing
17 with those who have been addicted to heroin.
18 We have a wonderful contingent of medical
19 professionals, law-enforcement professionals,
20 provider professionals, who understand this issue
21 extremely well.
22 And whether it's an emergency responder or a
23 member of Sheriff Gould's task force or other
24 law-enforcement officials, medical professionals,
25 they will help us provide appropriate insights into
4
1 this problem.
2 Senators with me today have been involved in
3 the Task Force deliberations, but I wanted to have
4 them understand the impact of this very serious
5 problem in a small city like Auburn, surrounded by a
6 rural area; that heroin addiction is not just
7 centered in the inner cities anymore.
8 And with that, I'd like to first let
9 individuals know that this is not a public hearing.
10 It is not a place to just stand and give
11 five minutes, ten minutes of testimony.
12 This is a place, a forum, to interchange
13 ideas and experiences, and, it will be freewheeling.
14 We'll try to manage it.
15 We want everyone to be able to voice their
16 opinions and provide us insights.
17 But other than our first testifier, and
18 I think you will understand why we asked this
19 individual to testify -- I'll explain that a little
20 later -- it will be freewheeling throughout that.
21 And with that, let me thank the person who
22 had to travel here the furthest, our Chairman of the
23 Task Force, Senator Phil Boyle.
24 Senator Boyle, thank you very, very much.
25 Along with him is -- to his right, is
5
1 Senator Tom O'Mara, represents much of the
2 Southern Tier, the central Southern Tier, and the
3 central Southern Finger Lakes;
4 And, of course, David Valesky, who, for many
5 years, represented a portion of Cayuga County, and
6 is an important member of our review panel.
7 Two Senators who could not be here today,
8 I need to mention them:
9 Senator John DeFrancisco, who had intended to
10 be here. He also represents a portion of
11 Cayuga County. He could not be.
12 And, Senator Jim Seward, who had to attend a
13 funeral of a military hero who was slain in the past
14 few days in Afghanistan.
15 They extend their wishes and thanks for your
16 participation.
17 I'd also like to thank Mayor Quill.
18 Thank you, Mayor, for the courtesies that you
19 have extended the Task Force.
20 This is a lovely chamber, and thank you for
21 allowing us to use your facility.
22 The Mayor has a meeting later, a City Council
23 meeting later today, so, unless we wrap up by an
24 appointed hour, we will be evicted.
25 Right, Mayor? Is that the --
6
1 [Laughter.]
2 SENATOR NOZZOLIO: With that, Chairman Boyle.
3 SENATOR BOYLE: Thank you, Senator Nozzolio.
4 I appreciate your hosting this forum.
5 And Mayor, as well, thank you so much; my
6 colleagues in the Senate.
7 We have been traveling around the state.
8 I represent Suffolk County on Long Island,
9 and all the way up to Buffalo and Western New York,
10 and this heroin epidemic is a statewide epidemic,
11 and it's a crisis.
12 I'm pleased to be here in Auburn.
13 Actually, I've been to Auburn many times, but
14 it was years ago.
15 For those of you who remember former
16 Congressman Frank Horton, I was his legislative
17 director in Washington, so I came to Auburn quite a
18 bit.
19 At that time, I didn't have any gray hair,
20 and Mike was an Assemblyman, so that was a while
21 ago.
22 But I wish I was here under different
23 circumstances.
24 And, today, these forums, as Senator Nozzolio
25 said, they're open.
7
1 We want answers from our panelists.
2 Certainly, we have a distinguished panel here.
3 And, from people in the audience who have
4 experienced the heroin epidemic in many different
5 ways, whether a personal crisis, through
6 law enforcement, or treatment, we want to hear what
7 you have to say.
8 And the question I always put is, "If you
9 could change a law or two to make this epidemic less
10 stressful on you, get treatment that needs to be
11 provided, and, law enforcement, what laws we can
12 change to put the bad guys away that are dealing
13 these drugs?" that's what we want to hear about.
14 Or, if you know of a law that's there, and
15 you don't think it's good, we need to get rid of it,
16 we'd like to hear that, as well.
17 So, Senator, thank you so much for hosting,
18 and we look forward to a good discussion.
19 SENATOR NOZZOLIO: Thank you.
20 Senator O'Mara? Senator Valesky?
21 SENATOR BOYLE: Senator O'Mara?
22 SENATOR O'MARA: Good afternoon.
23 My name is Tom O'Mara, and I am from the
24 Southern Tier, as Senator Nozzolio mentioned, just
25 south of the Senator's district, spanning the
8
1 southern Finger Lakes, and the Southern Tier along
2 the Pennsylvania border, from Ithaca to Hornell,
3 including Penn Yan, Elmira, and Corning. So, it's a
4 five-county district.
5 We have issues with the heroin problems
6 across the district.
7 I myself have a background in
8 law enforcement, having been a former district
9 attorney in Chemung County, as well as an assistant
10 district attorney in Manhattan.
11 So, my experience in the criminal justice
12 area is wide, and I look with great interest on the
13 input that we're getting at these forums across the
14 state.
15 You know, Phil -- or Mike mentioned that
16 Senator Seward couldn't be here today with us,
17 unfortunately, for that incident.
18 But I was in his district just a week and a
19 half ago, in Oneonta, for one of these forums. And
20 we're doing the forums across the state.
21 So I thank Senator Boyle and
22 Senator Nozzolio, Senator Valesky, for your
23 leadership on this issue.
24 And, my pleasure to be here in Auburn with
25 you today.
9
1 SENATOR VALESKY: Thank you, Mike, very much.
2 And I'm very pleased to be here, and pleased
3 to be back, just as a personal aside.
4 As Senator Nozzolio indicated, I had the
5 great opportunity and honor to represent part of the
6 city of Auburn and a number of towns in
7 Cayuga County before the last round of
8 redistricting, so it's very, very nice to be home,
9 and appreciate being here again.
10 I want to acknowledge Assemblyman Gary Finch
11 who just joined us, as well, and will participate.
12 One other thing I would add, as I certainly
13 thank Senator Boyle for traveling around the state,
14 I believe this is one of 17 Task Force meetings, so
15 that's a lot of traveling.
16 And I might add, that we are still in our
17 legislative session.
18 So, I don't know how he spends any time at
19 home these days, but we appreciate his -- the
20 generosity of his time in leading these efforts.
21 And the final point:
22 You all know Senator Nozzolio as being,
23 perhaps, your representative, depending on where you
24 live here in the Finger Lakes.
25 But, you may or may not be aware that he has,
10
1 just this last legislative term, been chairing the
2 Codes Committee in the State Senate.
3 And the reason why that is significant, this
4 process will lead to -- these Task Force forums will
5 lead to a package of bills that we intend to take up
6 in the State Senate prior to the conclusion of the
7 legislative session.
8 And Senator Nozzolio, as the head of the
9 Codes Committee, will certainly play a very
10 significant leadership role in that.
11 So we appreciate that, as well.
12 Thank you very much.
13 SENATOR NOZZOLIO: Thank you, Senator.
14 And as you indicated, we've been joined by
15 Assemblyman Gary Finch.
16 Assemblyman Finch, we squeezed in a chair for
17 you next to Chief Neagle, and I think that's a good
18 place for you to be.
19 [Laughter.]
20 ASSEMBLYMAN FINCH: [Inaudible.]
21 SENATOR NOZZOLIO: But we greatly appreciate
22 your participation, Assemblyman Finch, and you bring
23 a unique perspective here.
24 Just at the table, I'd like everyone to note,
25 on your left, my right, are professionals in the
11
1 health and mental-health field.
2 I'd like them to introduce themselves.
3 On my left, your right, are representatives
4 of law enforcement who are here, and they have a
5 very unique perspective, that we will be extracting
6 information from them, both sides, in the upcoming
7 minutes.
8 Also, there are a number of law-enforcement
9 officials who are seated in the front row here to my
10 left:
11 The District Attorney from Seneca County,
12 Barry Porsch;
13 The Sheriff of Ontario County, Phil Povero;
14 The Sheriff of Seneca County, Jack Stenberg;
15 Other law-enforcement officials;
16 That I will ask them to introduce themselves
17 during the course of this meeting.
18 But, thank you all for spending time.
19 If I could just ask you, beginning with the
20 gentleman on my far right, just introduce yourself
21 and your organization for everyone to know.
22 DR. JOHN RICCIO: My name is John Riccio.
23 I'm a physician. I'm the chief medical officer at
24 Auburn Community Hospital.
25 I am a pathologist by trade.
12
1 I'm the laboratory director, and I've been at
2 Auburn Community Hospital for 15 years. About
3 10 years before that in Syracuse.
4 I brought with me a real doctor,
5 Dr. Shakeel Usmani [ph.], who's an important lead
6 physician in our new emergency medicine group at the
7 hospital. He's board certified in emergency
8 medicine.
9 Shakeel.
10 DR. SHAKEEL USMANI [ph.]: My name is
11 Shakeel Usmani.
12 I graduated in 2008 from New York City.
13 I did internal medicine and emergency medicine.
14 I'm practicing ER for the last five years
15 now; for the last two years at Auburn Community
16 Hospital.
17 So if you have any --
18 SENATOR NOZZOLIO: Thank you, Doctor.
19 We really appreciate your participation.
20 Ray.
21 RAY BIZZARI: I'm Ray Bizzari. I'm the
22 director out at County Mental-Health Center.
23 We have some oversight responsibilities for
24 things like this.
25 KEVIN HARES: Kevin Hares, the director of
13
1 the CHAD office (Confidential Help for Alcohol and
2 Drugs), the local outpatient.
3 I've been there 37 years, so I have a fairly
4 extensively opinion on this.
5 SENATOR NOZZOLIO: Jon.
6 DA JON BUDELMANN: Jon Budelmann,
7 Cayuga County District Attorney.
8 I have one of my assistants,
9 Diana Anstedt [ph.], who's been working with drug
10 courts since it started here in our county.
11 I think Nate Darlin [ph.], another ADA of the
12 drug court is here, as well.
13 We handle the prosecution of drug offenders,
14 as well as some of the complications from drug
15 overdose, and cases along those lines.
16 SENATOR NOZZOLIO: Thank you, Jon.
17 Sheriff.
18 SHERIFF DAVID GOULD: Dave Gould,
19 Cayuga County Sheriff.
20 I have my Undersheriff, Jim Stole [ph.], in
21 the back.
22 We have a heroin task force out of our
23 Cayuga County Sheriff's Office, and I'm sure that
24 we'll get into that a little later.
25 But thank you for coming.
14
1 JUDGE MICHAEL McKEON: I'm
2 Judge Michael McKeon, Auburn City Court Judge.
3 I preside over both the felony and misdemeanor drug
4 court in Cayuga County.
5 POLICE CHIEF BRIAN NEAGLE: I'm Brian Neagle.
6 I'm the Police Chief here in the city of Auburn.
7 SENATOR NOZZOLIO: Thank you all very much.
8 We first would like to set the table, talking
9 about the nature of the problem, the scope of the
10 problem, in the Finger Lakes region.
11 That this is a very sad day, because it's a
12 sad anniversary date, of the death of a young woman
13 from Auburn, Jessica Gentile.
14 And that our first testifier, on behalf of
15 Jessica's family, is Kevin Jones.
16 Thank you, Kevin.
17 Please come to the podium.
18 And, Kevin, I know with you is Jessica's mom.
19 KEVIN JONES: Yes, this is Michele Gentile.
20 This is Jessica Gentile.
21 She graduated magna cum laude from
22 Cortland University.
23 She was a good writer. She was brilliant.
24 She was witty. She had every reason in the world to
25 live.
15
1 She died by heroin overdose on May 8th of
2 last year.
3 And, the gentleman that she was with didn't
4 notify 911, and didn't tell anybody. You know, he
5 waited three hours before he actually notified 911.
6 And if he had known about the Good Samaritan
7 Law, there's a Good Samaritan Law that states that
8 if you -- if you dial 911 for a medical emergency,
9 then you're not liable for prosecution whatsoever.
10 So, if he had known about that law.
11 We have this fantastic law that can save
12 lives, but nobody even knows about it.
13 So that would be one thing I would like to
14 add as a law to be changed, is put some funds
15 towards notifying people that the Good Samaritan Law
16 exists, and, you know, maybe we can save some lives
17 with that.
18 We tried to get Jessica treatment.
19 She was -- she started out -- she graduated,
20 she was unable to find a job. She was depressed for
21 a little while.
22 And she got to the point where she was so
23 depressed that we entered her into the
24 behavioral-health unit at the hospital.
25 Dr. Syed [ph.] recommended that she go to
16
1 intensive outpatient treatment because they
2 discovered marijuana in her system.
3 She had no opiates at that point.
4 And once they -- they recommended that.
5 And then she went to CHAD. There's a
6 two-week waiting period before you even get an
7 intake at CHAD.
8 There's almost a nine-month period before you
9 can get into a rehab around here.
10 And if you don't have the proper insurance,
11 there's only one rehab that you can go to in
12 New York State, and that's Dick Van Dyke, because
13 that's the only one that will accept you without
14 insurance.
15 That's another thing I'd like to -- law
16 I would like to address, is we don't have enough
17 rehabs in the area.
18 And -- okay.
19 And then the next part is, we went, and CHAD
20 recommended the same thing, you know, intensive
21 outpatient.
22 We got a letter from the insurance company,
23 OASAS, saying that, "We don't think they need that."
24 And so she never got the chance.
25 They offered -- CHAD offered us, to pay $75 a
17
1 day, 3 days a week, for as long as it took, which
2 would have been at least 6 months.
3 And I offered to trade in my retirement fund
4 to take care of that, but Jessica wouldn't have us
5 do that.
6 And, she died shortly after that.
7 So, the insurance companies overrode what a
8 doctor said, they overrode what a drug professional
9 said. And, they're just not doing their part.
10 And I understand this takes money.
11 I understand it takes a lot of money for
12 treatment and things like that, but we're paying for
13 it in our jails, we're paying for it in our prisons,
14 we're paying for it in our hospitals, anyways.
15 So -- so I would like some funds for that
16 type of stuff.
17 And, you know, you guys are doing a great
18 job.
19 I've seen more about heroin over the past
20 year than I've ever seen in my life.
21 And we're really thankful for this
22 Task Force.
23 And, you know, we're never going to be over
24 the loss of Jessica, but nobody has to suffer like
25 we did.
18
1 Would you like to?
2 MICHELE GENTILE: Yes, I would just like to
3 say a few words.
4 I, as her mother, I never, ever, would like a
5 mother to have to go through what we've endured this
6 last year.
7 Last year at this time we were in the ER
8 finding the news out.
9 But, I mean, we will do whatever we can to
10 help.
11 I want to do that in her name, because as a
12 mother, that is your job, to take care of your
13 children.
14 And you feel look a failure.
15 We didn't find out until the night before,
16 that she was using heroin.
17 She called me at work to tell me that
18 somebody was going to say that she was using heroin,
19 and it clicked in.
20 And I said, "I think you are."
21 So we -- my sister texted her and said,
22 "You're going to rehab tomorrow."
23 And she said, "Okay."
24 And then she went and had her last hurrah.
25 But -- so we, literally, found out the night
19
1 before, what the behaviors were, her distance. She
2 was definitely acting different. She was never,
3 ever home.
4 A couple posts on Instagram that my family
5 sent me came at, like, eleven at night, and she
6 totally looked torn up.
7 And I was, like: I know she smokes pot, but
8 this just can't be normal.
9 And I, like, texted her and yelled at her.
10 I said, "What are you doing?"
11 And, I mean, she definitely denied it.
12 She was always against it.
13 That fooled me.
14 So there's -- I think we need, definitely,
15 prevention. We need more rehabs.
16 And we definitely need Narcan, immediately,
17 here in Cayuga County to at least save lives.
18 That's just the Band-Aid to save their life,
19 which would be -- that's the blessing.
20 But, we also need, we definitely need it.
21 And I think the rehab for this is,
22 definitely, it's not 20 days, it's not 30 days.
23 It's longer.
24 And there needs to be, definitely, intensive
25 outpatient.
20
1 This drug is way too addicting.
2 And that's all I -- and thank you for having
3 us speak.
4 We appreciate that.
5 [Applause.]
6 SENATOR NOZZOLIO: Kevin and Michele, we wish
7 to thank you for your courage, and for coming here
8 to share what I know must be an anguished memory.
9 You've given us wonderful suggestions.
10 Kevin and I have talked a few times already.
11 We will continue our dialogue.
12 And I hope you can, Kevin, particularly
13 Michele, if you could stay throughout the forum to
14 help us in this focus.
15 But thank you very much.
16 I think this is as good a time as any to ask
17 our law-enforcement officials and providers to help
18 the Task Force understand what you're seeing each
19 and every day, and, the nature and extent of the
20 problem, as you see it, here in the central
21 Finger Lakes.
22 And let's start out with Jon and
23 Sheriff Budelmann.
24 Jon, Sheriff Gould and you are, I know, very
25 much involved with this.
21
1 Would you start, at least giving us an
2 outline.
3 SHERIFF DAVID GOULD: Thank you, Senator,
4 I will start.
5 We do have a task force, I mentioned this
6 earlier, the Sheriff's Department in Cayuga County.
7 It's made up of several members: uniformed members
8 and plain-clothes detectives.
9 We do intervention.
10 We stop cars, legally stop cars, when we can,
11 and, certainly, our main focus is to search for
12 heroin and ask about heroin.
13 We've made numerous arrests and received
14 numerous tips since we started.
15 We actually started back in February.
16 The Undersheriff came up with this great
17 idea, and ran it by me, and we certainly both
18 agreed, and we talked to our membership.
19 And I think it's been very successful,
20 working hand-in-hand with the Finger Lakes Drug Task
21 Force with Auburn PD.
22 Several of those cases were turned over to
23 our task force. Some of those names were already
24 known; others were not.
25 We have had numerous investigations.
22
1 Our NARCTIP: We have a NARCTIP,
2 N-A-R-C-T-I-P, line that rings right into the
3 Sheriff's Department with tips. It is anonymous.
4 We receive several, several tips, with family
5 members not wanting their names known to other
6 family members, neighbors, co-workers, telling us
7 about this terrible, terrible heroin epidemic.
8 And it is.
9 As the Senator said, it truly is.
10 Those tips have turned in a lot of arrests, a
11 lot of investigations, a lot of helping.
12 I'm certainly not going to take, you know,
13 Ray's thunder over and CHAD's thunder over. They
14 will certainly talk about the help, but these
15 individuals truly, truly do need help.
16 A lot of times they're coming to our jail
17 and -- for crimes that they committed to get money
18 to buy this heroin, even though it is very, very
19 inexpensive. And I'm sure someone else will go into
20 that.
21 But, they're sitting in our jail, coming down
22 from heroin, which is an awful, awful, awful thing
23 to watch, and to do.
24 It's very addictive and very hard to come off
25 of.
23
1 SENATOR NOZZOLIO: Sheriff and
2 Mr. District Attorney, what growth?
3 You say "numerous."
4 What is the extent of the growth of these
5 cases in our area, David?
6 SHERIFF DAVID GOULD: That's hard to
7 determine, Mr. Senator, because we haven't anything
8 to compare from the past.
9 This kind of hit us starting a year ago,
10 I think, and it just -- it came on so quickly.
11 When some of us were growing up years and
12 years ago, heroin was used by a very few amount of
13 people, and we thought that was the terrible thing
14 back then.
15 And now it's used by so many because of the
16 cost and the availability.
17 It's just -- it's unbelievable how available
18 it is.
19 SENATOR NOZZOLIO: Are the sheriffs from
20 Ontario County and Seneca County and the
21 Police Chief from Seneca Falls, are you seeing
22 growth, as well, in this area of cases?
23 UNKNOWN SPEAKER: [No microphone used.]
24 Absolutely.
25 Yes, absolutely.
24
1 And like Dave said, a year ago, a year and a
2 half ago, they were doing the Coke, and they were
3 doing the things of that nature.
4 Now it's the majority of our [inaudible].
5 SENATOR NOZZOLIO: Yes, Chief.
6 POLICE CHIEF BRIAN NEAGLE: In 2010, the drug
7 task force -- the Finger Lakes Drug Task Force, at
8 that time, they had 2 heroin buys that year.
9 In 2011, it went to 9 heroin buys.
10 In 2012, we went up to 31 buys of heroin.
11 And back down -- in 2013, it went down to
12 18 buys. But what happened there was, in February
13 of 2013, we had a sting -- well, not a sting -- we
14 had a roundup, where we arrested 13 heroin dealers
15 in the area.
16 Obviously, that took a big -- big -- put a
17 big dent into the sales.
18 But as of this year, we're up to about 11, as
19 far as buys.
20 So, you know, you probably say, on an
21 average, we're probably going to at least reach
22 where we were last year.
23 So it's -- we've seen a steady increase since
24 2010.
25 SENATOR NOZZOLIO: What has the prosecution
25
1 been, though, Jon?
2 DA JON BUDELMANN: Thank you, Senator.
3 I've been prosecuting drug crimes here in
4 Cayuga County since '95, and for most of that time,
5 cocaine has been our primary problem.
6 In the last five years or so, we've seen a
7 rise in the prescription drugs.
8 And as the Chief has put out the statistics,
9 I would say that heroin used to be about 2 percent
10 of our cases, maybe less.
11 We do probably 100 to 150 drug cases a year,
12 and 2 or 3 or 5, at the most, per year were heroin.
13 It was kind of an outlier.
14 Within the last year and a half, two years,
15 as you've heard, it's exponentially grown.
16 I would estimate it's probably higher than
17 the 31 cases, countywide, but those are controlled
18 buys, versus, possession, where a car is stopped or
19 a house is searched and drugs are picked up.
20 I estimate it's closer to 40 percent of our
21 illegal-drug cases now.
22 I think there are a couple of factors, if
23 I might, that lend to that, one of which, is we saw
24 a rise the prescription drugs, particularly the
25 opiate painkillers became quite a problem.
26
1 We'd see scrips for 180 oxycodone pills per
2 month, and, it's getting on the street. And then,
3 all of a sudden, that sort of dried up.
4 The physicians aren't writing those scrips
5 anymore, and now there's a pure, inexpensive heroin,
6 another opiate, on the market that's taken over.
7 My recollection, when I was young, was the
8 vision of a heroin addict who's some person -- a
9 homeless person in a gutter with a needle.
10 And that's just not the case.
11 It crosses all socioeconomic lines now, as we
12 see from Jessica's case, and many others.
13 And we're seeing headlines.
14 This was in "The Post" the other day.
15 Five overdoses in a 24-hour period, one of which
16 resulted in the death of a young woman.
17 And that's not an unusual headline anymore,
18 which is frightening.
19 So it's really, in the last year and a half
20 or so, come on full bore.
21 I think some of the things we're doing, like
22 your discussions, are bringing attention to it, and
23 I think that's actually cutting down on the number
24 of people.
25 I think people are remembering just how
27
1 lethal and dangerous heroin can be.
2 SENATOR NOZZOLIO: We'll come back to
3 law enforcement, and I'd also like the Chief from
4 Seneca Falls, and Barry Porsch from Seneca County,
5 also, to be part of the discussions, and think about
6 the tools you need.
7 I'd also like a report to the Task Force from
8 Judge McKeon, to talk about the drug court and other
9 items of judicial review.
10 But let's go -- we'll come back to that.
11 Let's go to the direct health focus with
12 hospital, mental health, and immediate provision of
13 services.
14 Doctor.
15 DR. JOHN RICCIO: Thank you very much,
16 Senator.
17 The District Attorney has made some very,
18 very good points that mirror our experience here in
19 Cayuga County on the health-care side, as well.
20 Historically, most heroin came from
21 Afghanistan. But, we had that war going on over
22 there, which, to some degree, disrupted the supply
23 chain, which is probably a good thing.
24 But, unfortunately, in nature, whenever
25 there's a void, it rapidly fills.
28
1 And in this case, the area that filled it was
2 Mexico, unfortunately.
3 Mexico is now the number two producer of
4 heroin in the world.
5 And, obviously, you just have to look at a
6 map, Mexico is much closer to the United States than
7 Afghanistan is.
8 So it's flooded the illicit market with
9 cheap, variable-grade heroin, which is cut with all
10 sorts of substances. And it's a nightmare for the
11 people taking care of these folks.
12 Here in Cayuga County, at our hospital, we
13 were able to go back and look at our overdose
14 numbers back into 1989.
15 We've always had overdoses of all sorts of
16 drugs, of course, but we really didn't start seeing
17 heroin until the mid to late '90s.
18 It increased until about, 2006, it peaked at
19 about one a month, and then it went back down.
20 But in the last three years, it has risen
21 again beyond that peak.
22 The first quarter of this year, we've seen
23 five or six heroin overdoses.
24 That puts us on track to see twenty five this
25 year if that progresses and continues the way it has
29
1 been, which is an outrageous number for a small
2 hospital.
3 And it's --
4 SENATOR NOZZOLIO: And, Doctor, thank you.
5 And just to put that in perspective:
6 The Task Force heard last week from the
7 New York County, Manhattan health-care providers.
8 They said about 500, was it, of overdoses per
9 year for a city of 8 million people.
10 Here for a city of 30,000 people, you do the
11 math, but it's as a proportional problem here as it
12 is anywhere.
13 DR. JOHN RICCIO: Exactly.
14 And, you know, we're fully equipped to handle
15 these overdoses in the ER, but one of the biggest
16 problems is, getting the patient from the point of
17 where it happened to the ER.
18 And, you know, how much time does that take?
19 What condition is the patient in?
20 When were they reported?
21 How were they found?
22 These are the things that save lives.
23 You know, if you find a patient and he's too
24 far gone, it doesn't matter how good our ER is and
25 how good our providers are, it's too late.
30
1 Heroin is a very, very powerful opioid, of
2 course, and it suppresses -- it's a depressant --
3 and it suppresses respirations, and that's how it
4 kills.
5 Simply, it depresses respirations.
6 There's a respiratory center in the brain
7 stem, and heroin causes a depression of our urge to
8 breathe.
9 When we sleep, obviously, we breathe.
10 When we pass out, we breathe.
11 But under the influence of heroin, we stop
12 breathing.
13 Slowly, but surely, we stop breathing, and
14 that's how you die from a heroin overdose.
15 The long-term effects, of course, are much
16 more difficult, including things like endocarditis,
17 which is an infection inside the heart.
18 That can be from the different chemicals and
19 powders and things that they use to cut the heroin.
20 New users, of course, do not have tolerance,
21 so they get the euphoric effects of heroin rather
22 quickly.
23 But every time you use heroin, your tolerance
24 goes up and up and up; you need more and more from a
25 source that you have no idea what the purity of the
31
1 heroin is; What is the concentration of the heroin?
2 What is it cut with?
3 So, it causes all sorts of complications and
4 all sorts of difficulties.
5 Once the patient gets into the ER, of course,
6 we can do significant treatment and, most times,
7 save their lives.
8 SENATOR NOZZOLIO: Is the availability of the
9 antidote now pretty regular among our hospitals in
10 the upstate area?
11 DR. SHAKEEL USMANI [ph.]: Yes, we do have.
12 We have -- when the patient presents to ER
13 with any opiates, narcotics, overdose, it's
14 sometimes quite serious, a very serious medical
15 condition, because as the doctor -- as Dr. Riccio
16 mentioned, it primarily suppresses your CNS and
17 respiratory center. There's no drive to breathe.
18 If the body lacks oxygen, it affects most
19 multi organs of the body.
20 SENATOR NOZZOLIO: One of the measures that
21 was enacted this week, in response to, I believe,
22 the energy put into this issue over the last few
23 months, and Senator Boyle might want to comment on
24 it, but it's the -- and my colleagues -- the measure
25 passed both the Assembly and the Senate, to make it
32
1 as a prescription basis, the antidote.
2 DR. SHAKEEL USMANI [ph.]: Right.
3 DR. JOHN RICCIO: One of the things, from the
4 point of view of the physicians and the health-care
5 providers is: Can we get help to these patients
6 quicker?
7 Some states have done just that, by putting
8 Narcan, which is an antagonist drug, which you
9 probably -- most of you are probably familiar with,
10 in the hands of first responders, including
11 police officers and EMT providers.
12 Narcan is a wonderful drug in terms of
13 combating this.
14 However, it's short-acting, but it does work
15 immediately for opioid-induced coma.
16 It's remarkable.
17 If you've not seen it, patients come in,
18 they're completely obliterated.
19 You give them Narcan, they wake right up.
20 It is short-lived, however. The half-life of
21 Narcan is about one hour.
22 There are some newer preparations that have
23 longer half-lives.
24 But the good thing about this drug is that,
25 you almost can't go wrong giving it, because it only
33
1 works against opioid substances.
2 It won't work against other drugs, and it has
3 few, if any, side effects.
4 So, the police officer or the EMT provider
5 who actually administers Narcan at the scene, if
6 they were able to do that, really can't go wrong
7 doing it, because if they give it in error, there's
8 no side effect, nothing goes wrong.
9 We just keep working on the patient and find
10 out exactly what it was they did take.
11 SENATOR NOZZOLIO: Are there any other
12 comments from our health-care-provider table?
13 Ray, any insights you can provide in terms of
14 the scope of the problem here in Cayuga County and
15 central Finger Lakes?
16 RAY BIZZARI: Yes, thanks, Senator.
17 SENATOR NOZZOLIO: Pull the microphone in.
18 RAY BIZZARI: [Microphone turned off.]
19 So, you know, Jim Stole was mentioned earlier
20 by Dave. He's the chair of the drug and alcohol
21 subcommittee.
22 We have these planning responsibilities, and
23 we're supposed to design a system that meets --
24 SENATOR NOZZOLIO: Ray, excuse me.
25 Please, the microphone didn't pick up.
34
1 RAY BIZZARI: We're supposed to design a
2 system that meets everybody's needs, and the
3 subcommittees and the community services boards are
4 the planning parts of this.
5 So, when Jim chaired -- Jim chaired this.
6 And, so, the agencies that provide treatment
7 report to the subcommittee, and then there's
8 legislative appointees that talk about this.
9 So we first started talking about
10 synthetic-marijuana use, and this was something that
11 was very concerning in the community. And there's
12 such a tremendous amount of abuse of this particular
13 drug.
14 And so we did some stuff with the drug task
15 force, we did some stuff with the agencies, and that
16 sort of led us into some other sorts of
17 conversations, and we wound our way towards
18 prescription-drug abuse and heroin abuse.
19 And, you know, I-STOP is program that was
20 sort of implemented as a law, that doctors and
21 pharmacies have to sort of look up to see -- people
22 doctor shop. They got a lot of medication from a
23 lot of different places.
24 That got shut down.
25 I think -- we think that's what drove a lot
35
1 of people towards heroin. It's cheaper, it's more
2 available.
3 You have a real hard time, you know, finding
4 narcotics nowadays, unless you buy them on the
5 streets.
6 So, I hear from people in a number of
7 different ways.
8 I get a lot of calls from families that talk
9 about their kids, adult children, parents who are
10 older who have become addicted, and they look for us
11 to do some sort of -- some sort of help, because
12 we're able to do certain things on the mental-health
13 side.
14 We don't have any of these tools on the
15 [unintelligible]. We can't order people, compel
16 people, in their treatment, and that sort of stuff.
17 So we hear from families, and that's pretty
18 disturbing.
19 We did some surveys in the schools last year,
20 where we asked kids about what they think about drug
21 abuse and alcohol abuse and bullying.
22 And you would be shocked to know that there's
23 a significant percentage of kids who think that
24 prescription-drug abuse isn't a bad thing because
25 they're prescribed.
36
1 So we have to change the way -- we've got
2 kids who are growing up, who are thinking, this
3 isn't such a bad thing.
4 You've got folks who've moved off of
5 prescription painkillers, into heroin, both in their
6 20s and 30s.
7 And we have them as older folk, as well, too.
8 So I think that -- that's what we see.
9 It's very disturbing.
10 These guys were at the subcommittee
11 yesterday, with some other folks, and told their
12 stories. Heartbreaking stuff.
13 I appreciate that you're putting this sort of
14 conversation together for communities, because we
15 are not -- and Kevin can really talk about this
16 because he's on the front lines -- but we are not
17 equipped.
18 We're far from being equipped to do what
19 really needs -- even to begin to do what really
20 needs to be done in this area.
21 So, that's the beginning of that.
22 SENATOR NOZZOLIO: Ray, Assemblyman Finch had
23 a question.
24 ASSEMBLYMAN FINCH: [Not using a microphone.]
25 Ray, there's a movement in this country to
37
1 legalize marijuana.
2 It was mentioned earlier that that may play a
3 part in this whole process.
4 I'd like to get your opinion about legalizing
5 marijuana, medically speaking, or otherwise.
6 And if it does, in fact, have an effect, is
7 it a gateway drug?
8 Is this something that we should be very
9 concerned about, or is this something that is a
10 non-issue?
11 Would you address that for me, please?
12 RAY BIZZARI: I think that we should do a
13 much better job of talking to kids in elementary and
14 middle school about alcohol abuse.
15 That's the drug that folks -- like, when you
16 look at what kids talk about, things that they're
17 exposed to, that's what they talk about.
18 Alcohol is a great dis-inhibiter of folks.
19 They tend to do things that they wouldn't do if they
20 weren't intoxicated.
21 So, I mean, I don't really -- the
22 medical-marijuana thing and treatment, and all that,
23 it's better for doctors to decide, I think, before
24 we have that conversation about whether or not
25 marijuana gets legalized.
38
1 We have to do something in the schools
2 around.
3 [Unintelligible] communities restricting
4 access to alcohol and tobacco, and those kinds of
5 things, because you take a look at everybody and
6 that's sort of where they start.
7 ASSEMBLYMAN FINCH: [Not using a microphone.]
8 Thank you, Ray.
9 Could we just redirect that question to the
10 doctor? [Inaudible.]
11 DR. JOHN RICCIO: I must be honest, I don't
12 have a real strong opinion about that.
13 There are -- there are studies out there that
14 you can quote either way, saying that:
15 Yes, it is an entry -- cannabinoids, or
16 marijuana, are an entry point for illicit use of
17 other stronger drugs.
18 And then there's probably just as many
19 studies saying that that's not true.
20 I think that THC and cannabinoids are kind of
21 a different class of drugs. They're not quite as
22 dangerous as what we see in the opioids, and
23 specifically heroin.
24 Whether or not they're as addictive, once
25 again, you can get opinions on both sides, but
39
1 they're certainly not as dangerous.
2 They don't suppress respirations. They don't
3 kill like heroin kills.
4 SENATOR NOZZOLIO: Kevin.
5 KEVIN HARES: Okay.
6 No.
7 SENATOR NOZZOLIO: I'm not asking you to
8 answer Assemblyman Finch's question.
9 I think what -- we're here to talk about
10 heroine.
11 And it -- just as an aside, I agree with the
12 doctor very much.
13 Senator Boyle and I were in New York last
14 week. We asked a recovering addict -- a heroin
15 addict, 20-year-old young man, prime of his life,
16 strong, getting away from it -- we asked him why he
17 did what he did. Why did he fall off into that use?
18 And he said, "Marijuana."
19 Now, I'm sure there are 10,000 stories from
20 each individual who does become addicted.
21 And that's really -- our focus here is --
22 will be on the prevention part, as well, but before
23 that, Kevin, could you just give us a scope of the
24 problem from what you have to deal with?
25 Explain your organization, and briefly give
40
1 us your unsights into where we are.
2 KEVIN HARES: Senator, we're a licensed
3 outpatient agency; have been for over 40 years.
4 What we've seen is, in my tenure there,
5 1 in 100 admissions, maybe 5, 6 years ago might have
6 been a heroin base.
7 Now, 1 out of every 2 is.
8 You know, and one of the big things that we
9 all have to wrestle with, that clearly is -- those
10 who work in the field, and many of them are here,
11 will, you know, applaud this -- but, our attitudes
12 have to change.
13 We do not accept treatment.
14 We do not accept recovery.
15 We do not see it as a positive.
16 We need to look at it as a health condition,
17 as a disease, and provide the proper treatment for
18 it.
19 I feel like we're second-class citizens when
20 it comes to funding, and we've kind of been left to
21 run a business, to provide the service, and the
22 State aid, since I started, has decreased quite
23 enormously over the years.
24 And what we're dealing with is, in my
25 opinion, and I guess this is where I'm really angry,
41
1 I have over 37 years of experience, but I have
2 someone in an insurance agency telling me when
3 somebody should go someplace and how severe their
4 problem is.
5 I didn't know that not getting -- you know,
6 not knowing what I know, and getting people to want
7 to get help, and then being told "no" on another
8 line, and saying to you: Well, you can talk to our
9 doctor.
10 I've not won a doctor's argument in 25 years.
11 Okay?
12 But what it boils down to is, we have
13 dismantled the system that worked. We have taken
14 away long-term rehab, which was spoken to here.
15 You need the ability to put people in the
16 programs that could last up to a year, because some
17 people's disease is that strong.
18 You need immediate access.
19 SENATOR NOZZOLIO: Kevin, let me just have
20 you emphasize that part.
21 In your experience, which I know is
22 considerable, what would you recommend?
23 I know it's individual, but, what is a
24 minimum stay?
25 KEVIN HARES: If you want to look at a system
42
1 of care, with opiates especially, and heroin, the
2 first step is, is let's remove ourselves from the
3 argument that there is no over -- you know, no detox
4 from heroin.
5 Everybody I talk to that has a heroin
6 addiction is afraid of the withdrawal.
7 So what is our problem in putting them in a
8 setting in which they can withdraw safely and feel
9 like there's somebody supporting them?
10 So that's detox, okay, or something similar
11 to that.
12 The second step is, I used to be able to put
13 people from detox straight into inpatient.
14 I can't to that now.
15 You have to fail like 16 different things
16 before you can even go there.
17 People die in between.
18 The big thing is that, you could go from
19 detox to inpatient.
20 If that does not work, then you should go to
21 long-term care.
22 If inpatient does hit the bell, come back to
23 us for intensive outpatient.
24 But, clearly, the system is not functioning
25 well because we're not being allowed to run our
43
1 system.
2 And I think the thing that's hugely important
3 is, I've seen a trend to try to save money in
4 health care.
5 I cannot imagine what you're spending on the
6 other side of this that is in law enforcement,
7 prosecution.
8 I mean, those folks would like to be out of
9 business in this, I guarantee you that.
10 But I think it's time that we step up and
11 really start to get angry, and tell the insurance
12 companies -- you know, I'm going to get in a lot of
13 trouble for this -- but, to let us make the call.
14 I don't get any money to send somebody to
15 rehab. There's no vested interest in me to send
16 somebody away.
17 What it is, is, when that level of care is
18 necessary, it should be accessible and it should be
19 quick.
20 When somebody talked about going inpatient,
21 to be able to get somebody inpatient in one day is a
22 miracle.
23 It's an average of three failed outpatients
24 and six months of waiting.
25 So it's -- I've got white hair now, that
44
1 I don't know if it's my age or this drug, but,
2 clearly, we have to respond, because this is where
3 you guys hold the keys, to me, because treatment
4 works, but we're handicapped.
5 And if anybody's handicapped, you know that
6 you can't do all that you need to do.
7 And then I think the best way to also look at
8 it is, and there's the other hat, prevention.
9 We have to get out to the communities.
10 We have to have a vehicle to talk to parents.
11 We have to have a vehicle to educate this
12 crowd, and more, to -- so families can know what
13 their daughters or sons might be messing around
14 with.
15 And, clearly, we don't have that.
16 And, you know, the smaller the county, the
17 less resources you're going to have.
18 SENATOR NOZZOLIO: And we're finding, again,
19 that the Task Force is hitting it on three levels:
20 The first and foremost is the prevention;
21 The second is the treatment;
22 And, thirdly, is appropriate prosecution, and
23 dealing with the law enforcement.
24 I'm going put you all on hold.
25 I want everybody to think of questions to ask
45
1 members of the panel, but before we do that, I just
2 want one more speaker.
3 He's one of my favorite EMTs.
4 He's very shy. He doesn't like to speak very
5 much, but I'm going to ask Lon Furcano [ph.] to come
6 up.
7 And Lon has extensive experience in this
8 endeavor.
9 I'd like him just to tell us what it's like
10 on the front lines as you respond to emergencies,
11 Lon.
12 LON FURCANO [ph.]: First, I'd like to offer
13 my condolences to Jessica's family. I share in your
14 grief. I worked on Jessica that morning.
15 So she's with me as well, and all of us who
16 were there.
17 I hope you listen to what Kevin just said,
18 because he hit the nail right on the head.
19 Drug addiction, and the treatment of drug
20 addiction, labors under the stigma of drug
21 addiction, as though those who are addicted to drugs
22 are somehow bad people; they're evil in some way,
23 they're criminals.
24 They're not.
25 They're somebody's mother, somebody's
46
1 daughter, somebody's son.
2 In the old days, when we would come to an
3 unconscious young person, the first thing we would
4 try to rule out was a drug or alcohol overdose.
5 If we came to an unconscious older person,
6 we'd be looking for a heart attack or a stroke.
7 Today, every unconscious person we come to,
8 the very first thing we look for is a drug overdose.
9 60-, 65-year-old people with fentanyl patches
10 stuck on the roof of their mouth, overdosing from
11 prescription medications.
12 Young people who got addicted with
13 prescription medications, and as has been pointed
14 out now, turned to heroin to avoid their morbid fear
15 of withdrawal.
16 And there are drugs and people who can help
17 them.
18 We have a wonderful physician in our
19 community, Dr. Donelo [ph.], who does this every
20 day, working with CHAD and other agencies, trying to
21 help people.
22 The treatment works.
23 The piece that's really missing, from my
24 perspective, is outreach.
25 People -- these people are sick. They have
47
1 an illness. They don't think straight. They're
2 living in a different reality than you and I.
3 And someone has to go out there, in many
4 cases, and get them, and hang on to them, and bring
5 them in, and help them get into the system, and
6 advocate for them; because, one part of our system
7 is trying to help them, and the other part of our
8 system is trying to put them in jail.
9 So, you know, there's a conflict there.
10 And we need -- back in the old days, I was
11 funded by New York State as a street-worker.
12 "Worker," not "walker."
13 It makes a difference.
14 [Laughter.]
15 LON FURCANO [ph.]: My job was -- back when
16 the Rockefeller drug laws went into effect, was to
17 go behind schools, go into alleys, engage street
18 gangs; find where the drugs were coming from, and
19 get those kids to come in to a drop-in center, where
20 they could begin to be treated, where they could
21 begin to get counseling, begin to get support
22 services.
23 And I was at risk for being arrested just to
24 be with them in those days.
25 If you were standing in the crowd, you were a
48
1 criminal.
2 So, we've come a long way from that, but
3 there's no outreach going on.
4 Somebody has to go -- when a family says,
5 "You know, I think something's wrong" with my
6 daughter, or my son, someone who knows what's going
7 on needs to go out there, find them on the streets,
8 because, by now, they probably don't have a driver's
9 license anymore, probably lost their job, probably
10 committing petty crimes for their habit. They're
11 not thinking straight.
12 You know, it gets very complicated, and we
13 don't have a mechanism to reach out there, grab onto
14 those people -- those good people, family people --
15 and bring them in so people like Kevin can fix them.
16 SENATOR NOZZOLIO: Lon, tell us about the
17 types of response.
18 I had -- we had an EMT talk to us this week
19 from Ithaca; just our neighbor to the south,
20 27,000 people, a city smaller than Auburn.
21 I asked him how many antidotes did he have to
22 give recently?
23 He said, within the last month, he had
24 four calls where the patient was ready to expire.
25 Four in April.
49
1 And, what type of levels are we seeing here
2 in Cayuga County?
3 LON FURCANO [ph.]: We're treating several of
4 those a week.
5 SENATOR NOZZOLIO: Several.
6 LON FURCANO [ph.]: But I want to make a
7 point that we bypassed, which is, there are a lot
8 more people who are functioning, that they haven't
9 reached that acute overdose point.
10 They're out there, on the streets, in
11 families, in homes, who are a walking army of this
12 close [indicating] to overdosing.
13 They're addicted, they're using the drugs.
14 And it's just -- when a miscalculation
15 happens, that's when we see them in the acute phase.
16 When they stop breathing, someone calls us.
17 We go in, we use Narcan.
18 We've had Narcan for 35 years.
19 It works, as the doctor pointed out, that
20 fast [snaps fingers].
21 But we're using it every day, and it's not
22 just heroin. It's opioids of all kinds. And we're
23 giving this stuff out like candy, like no one should
24 ever have a pain again in their life.
25 A little pain's good for you.
50
1 Those of you who are elected officials know
2 that.
3 [Laughter.]
4 SENATOR NOZZOLIO: Lon, thank you very much.
5 LON FURCANO [ph.]: Thanks for the
6 opportunity, Senator.
7 SENATOR NOZZOLIO: Very good to see you
8 again.
9 LON FURCANO [ph.]: Thank you.
10 [Applause.]
11 SENATOR NOZZOLIO: We have about an hour.
12 We'd like to open up the forum to questions:
13 questions of the people up here, questions of your
14 own selves, in terms of providers.
15 Who wants to begin?
16 You know, the only thing that we ask, there's
17 some ground rules.
18 You have to come up to the podium, because
19 those are the only two places that have microphones.
20 You might have to knock that camera out of
21 there to do so.
22 And, state your name and where you're from.
23 That's it.
24 Come on up.
25 SUPERSTAR: So, god, I'm doing this
51
1 keynote-speaking thing tonight, and I hope to God
2 audience doesn't as spriteful [ph.] and scary as you
3 guys.
4 Oh, my God.
5 So, my name is Superstar.
6 Some of you have heard of my work.
7 I've legally changed my name to raise
8 awareness to addiction issues; right?
9 And I travel the country.
10 I'm kind of in a different and unique
11 position, because I get to see the heroin epidemic
12 in every state across the country.
13 That's my main gig.
14 I travel, right, and influence teens to open
15 up and engage in crucial conversations with their
16 parents or with the people in the schools that they
17 trust.
18 But the pattern that I'm seeing, I'd have to
19 be a dimwit to not know what this pattern is, is
20 that the teens in school feel like no one really
21 cares about them.
22 They feel like -- many of those teens would
23 rather be in school than even go home at night
24 because of what's going on in their homes.
25 Right?
52
1 So as I travel to the schools in
2 Upstate New York here, I think what's been crucial,
3 and what's been helping others --
4 SENATOR NOZZOLIO: Excuse me, Mr. Superstar?
5 SUPERSTAR: Yeah.
6 You can call me Mr. Star.
7 [Laughter.]
8 SENATOR NOZZOLIO: We want to make this
9 available to everybody.
10 SUPERSTAR: I know, I agree.
11 I love to talk.
12 SENATOR NOZZOLIO: So we would love you to
13 ask your question.
14 SUPERSTAR: Yeah, here's my question:
15 Is there any possible way that -- teens that
16 don't feel safe going up to adults in the community
17 and ratting out their friends who are the drug
18 dealers, is there anything that we could do to get
19 into the schools, to put up a banner, an 800 number,
20 that says: Hey, here, call this number to safely
21 rat out your friend who's a dealer?
22 Something like that.
23 SENATOR NOZZOLIO: I guess that's a question
24 to our district attorneys.
25 DA JON BUDELMANN: Well, certainly, we would
53
1 encourage, and the school resource officers have
2 been great in this regard, of nurturing a
3 relationship with the students and law enforcement.
4 There are tip lines, like the Sheriff's tip
5 line, where they could anonymously report those.
6 I think we're fitting into the big part of
7 education, the outreach, reaching the younger
8 people, letting them know what options are out
9 there.
10 But we would certainly love to have them help
11 us stop the distribution of narcotics in our
12 communities, absolutely.
13 MARGIE TABER: I'd just like to add one
14 thing --
15 SENATOR NOZZOLIO: Your name?
16 MARGIE TABER: I'm Margie Taber, and I work
17 with Monroe County Youth and Family Partnership, and
18 the Rock Star Superstar project.
19 The one thing that we see consistently is,
20 these kids are dying -- young kids; seventh, eighth,
21 ninth, tenth, eleventh grade -- to talk to somebody,
22 to have crucial conversations, to open up.
23 So the people that have advocated and spoken
24 out about the outreach and the prevention, I can
25 just say, from our perspective, and that sometimes
54
1 the kids -- we need to focus on creating
2 opportunities for these kids to be heard.
3 And we just see it.
4 And I don't have the magic answer for it, but
5 I just know, too many people are dying.
6 And it's sad.
7 Anyway.
8 SENATOR NOZZOLIO: The points are raised
9 about, certainly, education.
10 And, I know all the law-enforcement officers
11 here have been very involved with the D.A.R.E.
12 programs, the education programs.
13 We're trying -- we've heard those programs
14 being praised, and vilified, during the course of
15 these discussions; and either that they've worked or
16 they haven't.
17 And that -- in terms of those types of
18 prevention.
19 And I guess this is as good a time as any,
20 also to talk about diversion.
21 And, Judge McKeon, in terms of your drug
22 experience with the drug courts, what are we seeing
23 that as a -- is it a positive situation?
24 Where are we with those types of
25 deliberations?
55
1 And, if there are necessary tools that are
2 omitted, what should we look to replace them with?
3 JUDGE MICHAEL McKEON: Thank you, Senator.
4 I've been running the Auburn City
5 Drug-Treatment Court since 2003. And when we first
6 started out in our first couple years, our
7 population, in terms of heroin, opiate, was
8 2 percent.
9 It is now 50 percent of our population that
10 comes into our drug courts: opiates and heroin
11 users.
12 And, it's a huge jump. And, really, in the
13 last two or three years, this has really happened.
14 And that's what we're seeing.
15 I'd echo what Kevin said; one of our big
16 frustrations is the inability to get people into
17 inpatient, running through the hoops that the
18 insurance companies put us through.
19 And sometimes it's -- you know, it's to the
20 detriment to the person in the program, that there's
21 not an access, quickly, to inpatient treatment.
22 It's a long, involved process, and we've had
23 people waiting months and months. And sometimes we
24 lose people in the program because of it.
25 So that's a significant problem.
56
1 The lack of long-term-care facilities in
2 New York is a significant problem.
3 There are very few long-term programs. And
4 that's doubly difficult to get someone admitted and
5 paid for by insurance in a long-term-care program.
6 I think what can be lost in the process here,
7 in terms of, again, looking at numbers, is the
8 mental-health side of all this.
9 I mean, probably 70 percent of all people who
10 are opiate and heroin users have mental illness;
11 co-occurring disorders.
12 And there's a lack of inpatient programs for
13 co-occurring disorders.
14 It's very rare that the person who's addicted
15 to opiates and heroin does not also have some mental
16 health involved with it, and you need to treat both
17 at the same time.
18 It's an ongoing controversy, I know, but,
19 there's a lack of those facilities in New York,
20 which impacts everyone who is involved with this
21 population.
22 Again, it's frustrating, where I'll issue an
23 order for the person to go into inpatient, and, you
24 know, they simply ignore it.
25 Again, I'm not trying to blame the insurance
57
1 companies for all of the ills, but, treatment does
2 work, as has been said time and time again.
3 And good treatment, consistent treatment,
4 does work. And we've had great successes in the
5 drug court with opiates- and heroin-addicted
6 individuals; though, they are probably our toughest
7 population to deal with, and, involve a lot of
8 intensive work to get someone into recovery.
9 It's a long process.
10 And, again, the person who's addicted doesn't
11 think of the consequences of what their actions that
12 they take.
13 They're just thinking about the next fix.
14 And so, again, I echo everybody, in terms of,
15 we need more treatment in New York.
16 We need more beds available.
17 There's a lack of medical detox beds, which
18 is another big issue.
19 There are very few of them in New York, or at
20 least in this area.
21 Crisis centers, again, used for people who
22 are addicted, for a short period of time, before
23 they move into, you know, the program, a shortness
24 of those facilities in New York, as well, especially
25 in this community, and surrounding counties in the
58
1 Finger Lakes.
2 So, I think we would have a much better
3 success rate.
4 And, we do have a very good success rate for
5 people in drug courts. They do work. A very
6 inexpensive alternative to incarceration.
7 But I think we'd do a better job, and would
8 be more successful, if we were able to get people
9 into the programs that CHAD recommends, quicker, and
10 to the right program that will effectively address
11 the needs of that particular client.
12 SENATOR BOYLE: Your Honor, a quick question:
13 On -- for the patients that come in front of
14 you, and defendants, do you have a rule against any
15 other drugs: Suboxone, or anything like that?
16 Because some counties seem -- county court
17 drug courts seem to have that rule, and others
18 don't.
19 JUDGE MICHAEL McKEON: We don't.
20 SENATOR BOYLE: You don't.
21 JUDGE MICHAEL McKEON: We allow people to go
22 on Suboxone, yes, we do.
23 And we allow people to be in a methadone
24 clinic, as well.
25 SENATOR BOYLE: And one quick question for
59
1 the District Attorney: How you make a decision.
2 We've heard different stories from different
3 counties about who gets to go to drug court.
4 Obviously, we want to get the bad guys, the
5 true drug dealers, out of there. And those that are
6 maybe selling to support their habit, and treat them
7 in a different way.
8 DA JON BUDELMANN: Thank you for the
9 question, Senator.
10 I always believed that there was a two-part
11 approach that needed to be followed.
12 The first was, to prosecute drug dealers; to
13 limit the supply of the drugs into our community, to
14 limit the number of addicts we're creating, by doing
15 that.
16 The second part was the treatment.
17 You needed the resources there to try to
18 treat addicts to reduce the demand.
19 I think there's a third part that Lon Furcano
20 has mentioned, and I think we've heard it here from
21 Superstar here, as well, which is, we need to
22 educate before we get the addicts.
23 That stigma that was there when I was a young
24 man, about the needle in the arm, isn't there
25 anymore. It's been glamorized, or somehow otherwise
60
1 made.
2 And it figures into a big-picture question
3 versus small question.
4 Obviously, treatment costs a lot of money,
5 but drugs are the locomotive that drive our crime
6 train.
7 There's -- the offenses that are caught, that
8 are committed by the drug dealers: violent offenses,
9 guns, assaults, shootings.
10 There are offenses committed by addicts, to
11 try to get money to buy drugs: the theft, the fraud,
12 the identity theft.
13 There are offenses that are committed while
14 people are under the influences of these substances.
15 And, you're right, we have to investigate
16 them with our police.
17 We have to prosecute them.
18 We defend most of them as indigent
19 defendants.
20 Our courts are consumed.
21 Our jails are consumed.
22 So, if we can spend some of the money that we
23 would otherwise have to spend to do all of that, to
24 try to treat people and reduce the human suffering,
25 I think that would go a long way.
61
1 In terms of the issues that are -- in
2 responding to your question, I apologize, Senator
3 for delaying on it -- we look at who is a -- what
4 I would call a "true drug dealer."
5 And I haven't done this for 20 years, I've
6 sort of classified people:
7 You have for-profit drug dealers. People
8 that are, essentially, doing it as a lifestyle, as a
9 money-maker, as a way of getting access to young
10 women, or whatever it is that their motivation is.
11 Then we have people, what I call
12 "addict-dealers," or "facilitators," are more likely
13 a good description of them. Someone that is
14 addicted themselves, and rather than stealing to
15 support their addiction, they are turning to dealing
16 to support their adduction. They are spreading the
17 misery that the dealers are, but they also have
18 somewhat of an excuse. I guess it's not just purely
19 profit-driven.
20 What I would call a "true dealer" should not
21 be in a drug court, should not be in a diversion.
22 Should be in prison, where they belong.
23 Someone that is an addict, dealer,
24 facilitator dealer, more of a middleman, that's
25 where we get into the kind of critical questions.
62
1 Someone that's a low level, that's kind of --
2 doesn't even hold themselves to drugs. They have to
3 take the money from the addict, to go meet the
4 dealer, get the drugs, go back to the addict, that's
5 a low-level person.
6 They're suffering probably as much as the
7 addict. That's a person that we might want to put
8 into a drug court, in a community-supervision
9 situation.
10 Someone that has, you know, 50 doses of
11 heroin on them, even if they're an addict, I still
12 think they need to go to prison.
13 So that's sort of the way I'm looking at it.
14 I'm trying to classify them in the seriousness of
15 their dealing.
16 But one of the things that we've sort of
17 turned the clocks back, as you know, the prison
18 population has gone down about 20,000 in the last
19 8 or so years. And a lot of that has to do with the
20 drug-law changes.
21 We had the Paterson drug laws of 2009, which,
22 one, removed mandatory prison.
23 We had a -- prosecutors had the discretion to
24 require a plea to a sale third that would require
25 prison.
63
1 Now, that is not a required sentence for
2 that.
3 So, if we thought someone belonged in prison,
4 we would require the plea or trial on a sale third.
5 Now, we can't force that.
6 If we didn't think they deserved prison, we
7 could reduce the charge and get away from mandatory
8 prison.
9 The second part of that is what we call
10 "diversion," which, essentially, pulls the
11 prosecution, the law enforcement, out of the
12 equation.
13 It puts it entirely in the courts' hands,
14 which I think is a violation of the separation of
15 powers, but it's another situation. We haven't
16 gotten into an appeals on that yet.
17 That I have a real issue with, because, the
18 Court, as an arbiter, is not supposed to be
19 investigating, or talking to one side versus the
20 other. And it's, essentially, pulling it right out
21 of our hands.
22 So, again, my two-part, now three-part
23 approach, is prosecution and treatment.
24 If we're taking away the prosecution, we're
25 going to end up back where we were in the
64
1 Rockefeller Era when we got the Rockefeller drug
2 laws, which is, the number of addicts is going to go
3 sky high, and we're going to be working decades to
4 try to bring that number down, and the amount of
5 human suffering that's going to happen because of
6 that is incalculable.
7 So, I don't know if that answered your
8 question, round about?
9 SUPERSTAR: We're going step down over here.
10 All right?
11 SENATOR O'MARA: Well, I was going to get --
12 I wanted to get a question for you, so I'm glad
13 you're still standing up there.
14 SUPERSTAR: Oh, okay. Good.
15 SENATOR O'MARA: You mentioned you traveled
16 in different states, and, you work in Monroe County,
17 and about programs in schools, to provide an outlet
18 for those that might want to, so-called, narc on
19 somebody to do that.
20 What have you seen, in your experience, that
21 has been productive, or has worked, in areas that
22 you've seen?
23 MARGIE TABER: Well, I think when we travel,
24 this topic, it's across the United States.
25 We hear it from rural communities.
65
1 I know I'm preaching to the choir here.
2 But I think one of the things that we see is,
3 there's so many layers with this.
4 And when we go into a school, and Superstar
5 does his presentation, it opens the door for
6 conversations.
7 And then what we try to do is align the
8 providers and the school people that are working, to
9 piggyback and be there to engage in the
10 conversations, and help kind of disseminate the kids
11 to the appropriate people so that the conversations
12 can continue to increase awareness.
13 It's -- you know, it's not just going in,
14 giving a message, and going on our way and saying,
15 Okay, it's over with.
16 We all have to work together, and we have to
17 collaborate.
18 So -- you know, and there's just so many
19 layers to this that's affecting kids and families,
20 that it's just crazy.
21 So I think, for me, it's all of us coming
22 together, pooling our strength, and building upon
23 opportunities to engage kids in conversations.
24 We were just in a school in Saratoga County
25 last week. Thirty kids came up afterwards, each of
66
1 them with different topics of things they wanted to
2 talk about, from, I'm worried about my brother who's
3 in the military in Afghanistan, and his drinking,
4 to, what's going on in the homes.
5 And it just keeps speaking to me that these
6 kids need opportunities.
7 They're crying out in so many ways, to be
8 able to talk.
9 And whether they're not seeing what's there
10 in front of them, I don't know.
11 But --
12 SENATOR O'MARA: How are your programs
13 funded, to allow you to go around and do this?
14 MARGIE TABER: It depends.
15 When we go into a school, sometimes
16 coalitions pay for them, sometimes.
17 We were just in Seneca County a year and a
18 half ago. We were in all the schools in
19 Seneca County, and that was funded by their
20 coalition. The council provided some funding.
21 Sometimes the schools cover it themselves.
22 And with us, it's about collaborating
23 wherever we're going, to partner --
24 SENATOR NOZZOLIO: Excuse me.
25 MARGIE TABER: I'm sorry.
67
1 SENATOR NOZZOLIO: What do you mean by
2 "coalition"?
3 When you say "coalition," who --
4 MARGIE TABER: The coalition might be a group
5 of, whether it's providers, prevention
6 organizations. Stop DWI programs.
7 SENATOR NOZZOLIO: You were in Seneca County.
8 That was kind of a combination of a different -- of
9 a number of different sources of funding?
10 AUDIENCE MEMBER: [Inaudible.]
11 SENATOR NOZZOLIO: Please.
12 MARGIE TABER: Substance-abuse coalitions.
13 I'm sorry.
14 AUDIENCE MEMBER: [Not using a microphone.]
15 Seneca County Substance-Abuse Coalition, about
16 65 providers are working on it [inaudible].
17 SENATOR NOZZOLIO: They come together and do
18 this sort of educational outreach, I mean, I think
19 that's great.
20 It's something we need to look at, in terms
21 of how we can maybe help structure this better, to
22 keep these types of educational programs going.
23 Thank you very much.
24 MARGIE TABER: Thank you.
25 SENATOR NOZZOLIO: Appreciate your work.
68
1 [Applause.]
2 SUPERSTAR: Narcan did save my life.
3 I just wanted to let you guys know that.
4 [Unintelligible]. Narcan saved my life.
5 You know what? Pot also led me straight to
6 heroin.
7 I just wanted to add that.
8 Thanks.
9 SENATOR NOZZOLIO: Thank you.
10 [Applause.]
11 SENATOR NOZZOLIO: While we've got
12 Seneca County, I just want to hit -- I didn't -- is
13 Ms. Wilkinson here from Tompkins County?
14 I didn't want to miss -- she's in the -- a
15 district attorney there.
16 Okay.
17 So, Barry, same types of things that Jon has,
18 you have east, west, of here?
19 DA BARRY PORSCH: Do you want me to stand up
20 here, Senator?
21 SENATOR NOZZOLIO: Sure.
22 DA BARRY PORSCH: Same type of things that
23 Jon mentioned, and also Sheriff Gould mentioned.
24 We really were able to crack down on
25 prescription-drug abuse, and from what I see, it
69
1 just shifted everybody to heroin. And from what
2 I understand, heroin is cheaper than the pills.
3 We have an epidemic in Seneca County.
4 And I know my sheriff, Sheriff Stenberg, he
5 can talk on that a little bit more, but we have
6 quite a few overdoses recently on heroin.
7 We're one of the smallest counties in the
8 state, and we have an epidemic in our county with
9 regards to heroin.
10 I was in a town court last week. I had
11 four felony hearings in one morning.
12 All four defendants, none of them were
13 charged with heroin possession. They were all
14 heroin addicts, though, and they were committing
15 other crimes. That's why they were there.
16 So it's more than just possession of drugs or
17 selling drugs. It's all the other crimes that go
18 with it, and it's really swamped our court system,
19 too.
20 And I also work in drug court in
21 Seneca County.
22 And like Kevin said, a lot of those people
23 need inpatient treatment.
24 It's just not available, unfortunately,
25 because they don't have insurance. They're not
70
1 working. And, they come from family -- broken
2 families, a lot of them, so they don't have access
3 to that.
4 We probably could use more of that.
5 We really don't have an option there.
6 But I'll speak -- the Assemblyman mentioned
7 about marijuana. I'll speak on that; I have an
8 opinion on that.
9 And I'd like to tell the Governor, we do not
10 need to legalize marijuana in the state. Even
11 medical marijuana, that's a joke.
12 You go out there in California and where
13 that's been enacted, that's the same thing as
14 legalizing marijuana.
15 We're trying to stop one drug. We don't need
16 to legalize another one.
17 And people who use heroin also use marijuana.
18 The people who sell heroin, sell marijuana.
19 Those cartels in Mexico that are importing
20 heroin, they're importing marijuana in this country.
21 We can't legalize it in New York.
22 Thank you.
23 [Applause.]
24 SENATOR BOYLE: Can I just follow up with a
25 question?
71
1 I think the debate that's going on in Albany
2 now about medical marijuana is not a California
3 model. It's more like a New Jersey, very
4 restrictive.
5 We're never going to see a California model
6 here.
7 Regarding -- and please tell me, from your
8 county, and I hear from different counties: How do
9 you prosecute the dealers with the amount of heroin
10 they have?
11 I mean, we have a case -- I have a bill now
12 that says, 50 bags, and that's a felony. Okay?
13 We have cases on Long Island, where,
14 literally, had 800 bags, and they were a
15 misdemeanor.
16 I mean -- and, yet, I talk to DAs upstate
17 and they say: No, we've got plenty of --
18 Are the laws strict enough now? Or, is it
19 just an enforcement matter?
20 How do you feel about that?
21 DA BARRY PORSCH: I believe it's strict
22 enough.
23 Everybody that gets arrested in Seneca County
24 either possessing or selling heroin, it's a felony,
25 they get prosecuted as a felony. I don't reduce any
72
1 to a misdemeanor.
2 It doesn't mean, because they're convicted of
3 a felony, they're going to state prison.
4 Very few people actually go to state prison,
5 in Seneca County.
6 All these people that are selling heroine are
7 also users.
8 We don't have any cities in Seneca County.
9 The people that are selling heroin, they're
10 almost all users. They go to Rochester, get their
11 heroin, they come back. They use half of it, they
12 sell the other half so they can keep they are habit
13 going.
14 We don't have any of the dealers that you
15 have in the cities.
16 SENATOR NOZZOLIO: Barry -- Chief Peenstra
17 and Sheriff Stenberg here, what type of additions do
18 you have to offer, Sheriff and Chief, about what
19 smaller units of law enforcement have to deal with
20 in this [unintelligible]?
21 SHERIFF JACK STENBERG: We have a couple of
22 issues.
23 First of all, a check through our 911 system,
24 dealing with overdoses that were reported through
25 them, this year alone we've had seven, of which
73
1 three have died.
2 That's just in Seneca County, and that's just
3 ones we know about that have gone through
4 law-enforcement system.
5 Unknown how many may have gone directly to
6 hospitals, what have you.
7 What you're talking -- what Barry was talking
8 about, some of our interdictions for heroin, where
9 we know people are going to Rochester, where we stop
10 them on the way back, many, many times we've got
11 people that come back from Rochester with 100 bags,
12 and 20 of them will be tore open and used by the
13 driver of the car.
14 If he gets down to 40 or 50, he's going to
15 have enough to sell, to make enough money to go out
16 and buy another 100, and, again, like what we've
17 already been saying, take care of himself.
18 Another issue, as the Sheriff and the other
19 sheriffs I know will agree with me:
20 A crisis that we have is, people need to
21 understand, our jails are not a dumping grounds for
22 addicts and mental-health people.
23 I started 1968.
24 We had a fantastic facility, Willard State
25 Hospital, in our county.
74
1 We took people to Willard that needed to go
2 to Willard.
3 Today those people are in my jail.
4 It's wrong every way in the world you can
5 look at it.
6 They can't function in jail.
7 They're not getting any better in jail.
8 They're not getting treatment they need.
9 They're committing crimes, and they don't
10 even have a concept of what they're doing.
11 That's got to turn around.
12 We are not -- we are not the least bit
13 qualified to take care of overdoses, take care of
14 people detoxing, coming down off heroin or any other
15 drug, including alcohol.
16 But we're tasked with that because we're the
17 only facility available to put these people.
18 That's, in our opinion, I know sheriffs
19 across the state, that's a crisis situation that
20 needs to be addressed some way or another.
21 SENATOR NOZZOLIO: Thank you, Sheriff.
22 Thank you, Chief.
23 [Applause.]
24 SENATOR NOZZOLIO: Thank you, Barry.
25 Yes. Ladies first.
75
1 TERRI WASILENKO: Hi. I'm Terri Wasilenko
2 from the National Alliance on Mental Illness here in
3 Cayuga County.
4 You know, we've been talking about many
5 pieces of the puzzle.
6 My belief, and my question is, since
7 mental illness and addiction goes hand in hand,
8 where's our funding for dual-diagnosis programs?
9 You know, I have tons of --
10 [Applause.]
11 TERRI WASILENKO: Thank you.
12 -- I have things to leave for Senators to
13 read, but, you know -- so, I guess that's my
14 question: Where us our money to help these
15 individuals recover their lives?
16 Anybody want to start?
17 [Laughter.]
18 SENATOR O'MARA: Well, I'd like to -- well,
19 where's the money? There's a lot of people asking
20 that question all over the state, for a variety of
21 different reasons.
22 And that's part of the reason for these task
23 forces, is to figure out where to put the money as
24 it may become available.
25 I guess what I'd like to ask, I've been
76
1 thinking about it here, from yourself, as well as
2 the other providers here, and law enforcement,
3 probably the sheriffs in particular, the
4 differential between the cost of incarceration
5 versus the cost of treatment on a 6-month to year
6 basis, if we can kind quantify where we're spending
7 our money.
8 TERRI WASILENKO: Well, I think our money
9 needs to be spent in treatment.
10 SENATOR O'MARA: No, I understand your
11 perspective, but what's the cost?
12 What are we -- I know there's a societal
13 cost.
14 That's not what I'm talking about.
15 I'm talking about the actual dollars and
16 cents of jail versus treatment that might actually
17 work.
18 DA JON BUDELMANN: Senator, if I might
19 respond?
20 SENATOR O'MARA: Yes.
21 DA JON BUDELMANN: We talked about kind of
22 the global picture.
23 You have to look at the big picture on these
24 things.
25 Thing like drug court are extremely
77
1 expensive, per person, to supervise in the
2 community.
3 The trick is, and the answer here, lies in
4 not the daily cost to incarcerate someone versus
5 treat them with a number professionals, but the
6 long-term cost.
7 If we get them so their addiction is under
8 control and they're not suffering, we don't have to
9 continue to incarcerate them.
10 If we just continue to incarcerate them, we
11 will always have to incarcerate them because we
12 won't be hitting their addiction.
13 So it's a short-term cost that's exceeding
14 the short-term cost to incarcerate, but it's a
15 long-term cost to incarcerate that grossly exceeds.
16 Also, as Sheriff Stenberg pointed out, it's
17 not the right place for them.
18 We have no other place for them right now to
19 prevent them from committing other crimes, killing
20 other people on the roads, and so on, creating other
21 addicts, spreading the poison.
22 At the same point, it's not the appropriate
23 place for them.
24 There's a better place, we just need to reach
25 it.
78
1 SENATOR O'MARA: Don't perceive from my
2 question that I'm suggesting that we choose jail
3 over treatment.
4 That's not the point of my question.
5 I'm just trying to get an idea of what the
6 actual -- how much more expensive it is to --
7 SENATOR NOZZOLIO: And I think -- if I may,
8 I think it's a very good question, a very relevant
9 question. And, Sheriff Stenberg mentioned Willard.
10 Now, all of you who may or may not be
11 familiar with Willard, was a psych center for many
12 years, that it was closed under the past
13 Governor Cuomo.
14 I predate all the Senators here.
15 We converted that.
16 I was Chairman of the Crime -- Victims Crime
17 and Corrections Committee.
18 We created the first drug-treatment prison in
19 the history of the state, where someone incarcerated
20 would actually get treatment, would get it in a very
21 expedited way. It was a 90-day, in effect,
22 intensive program to be effective.
23 And Terri's so right, that it is a terrible
24 choice.
25 Unfortunately, I believe that we've seen that
79
1 path turn, and so that Willard is not as effective
2 as it could be, in part, because there is a
3 reluctance to sentence the appropriate individual.
4 They might be dealing, sort of the model Jon
5 said, and the District Attorney in the discussion
6 has veto power -- not Jon has veto power -- every
7 district attorney in the state can decide whether to
8 send an inmate, or potential inmate, to Willard,
9 but, they've been reluctant to do so for a variety
10 of reasons.
11 And a very important question, one we're
12 searching for, we're searching for answers of
13 questions of, "What's effective?" What will
14 prevent?
15 I mean, I like Mr. Superstar.
16 I like the kind of, maybe, different, less
17 structured-type programs that make sense and are
18 relevant to young people.
19 That's a first step, and we're trying to
20 figure out what we can help these coalitions, to put
21 the cost together, how we can do that in an
22 appropriate way.
23 More ideas about prevention?
24 Anybody else want to talk about prevention?
25 Sir.
80
1 Thank you, Terri.
2 TERRI WASILENKO: Thank you.
3 BRAD FINN: Thank you.
4 My name is Brad Finn. My profession is
5 prevention, and I work in Onondaga County, but
6 collaborated a lot with Cayuga County on an ongoing
7 basis.
8 I have three succinct questions, not to take
9 any more time than necessary question.
10 Question Number 1: Certainly, on the
11 treatment side, I know we have these wonderful
12 Narcan kits out there.
13 Why don't we pass some type of legislation
14 that requires that every one of these kits have
15 information for family members and for the addict,
16 about where they can get some help, whether that is
17 formal treatment or 12-steps.
18 We get a lot of calls from parents who want
19 to know "What can we do?" and those parents are very
20 concerned.
21 When we bring someone back from death with
22 one of these kits, that's wonderful.
23 But why don't we have something in those kits
24 that's required for the family member, loved ones,
25 as well as the addicted person?
81
1 I want to back it up a little bit more.
2 We talked about intervention; early
3 intervention.
4 Why don't we look at a model that's been
5 proven through SAMHSA.
6 It's an evidence-based model called "SBIRT"
7 (Screening Brief Intervention Referral To
8 Treatment).
9 And this model, which is engaged by all the
10 medical community, it's a real quick, down-and-dirty
11 screening. And if a screen pops up the potential or
12 possibility of an addiction, a brief intervention is
13 done right there.
14 The beauty of SBIRT is that, if a physician's
15 office, a clinic, a hospital-based service, uses
16 this, they can bill for SBIRT.
17 And last week, on Thursday, my colleagues met
18 with Senator Valesky and talked about this issue.
19 And to back it up one more, my third question
20 is: We talked about coalitions.
21 Coalitions are an extremely important answer
22 to communities.
23 Coalitions: Why don't we put money to fund a
24 position to coordinate counties.
25 We all work together, but we need one central
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1 mass to help lead communities when we come across
2 issues like this.
3 That way, we have a system in place, because
4 once we knock down this demon, there's another one
5 that's going to pop up.
6 And if we have built coalitions,
7 solution-based in communities, we will have an
8 opportunity to address the next issue, as well.
9 Thank you.
10 SENATOR BOYLE: Thank you very much.
11 It's --
12 [Applause.]
13 SENATOR BOYLE: Those are excellent
14 suggestions.
15 And the Narcan thing, that's a great idea.
16 We're definitely going to take you -- follow
17 you up on that.
18 As far as SBIRT, I actually have legislation
19 now, a bill, that would mandate, as part of the
20 continuing medical education for physicians, to do
21 SBIRT training.
22 SENATOR NOZZOLIO: Who else wants to talk
23 about prevention or treatment?
24 Yes.
25 ERICA TURNER: Good afternoon.
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1 My name is Erica Turner, and I work with
2 AIT Laboratories, which is a forensics laboratory in
3 Indianapolis, Indiana.
4 We have recently worked with the Indiana
5 legislators to create the bitter-pill policy,
6 which -- in regards to how prescribers are writing
7 these prescriptions for opiates and for narcotics.
8 What does the State have in place to monitor
9 those prescriptions once they leave the door?
10 I understand that we have the
11 prescription-drug monitoring program, the
12 New York State I-STOP, but there are loopholes with
13 that, as well.
14 From what I understand, methadone clinics do
15 not have to log the methadone prescriptions that are
16 going in through there.
17 So, if that patient were to show up in their
18 primary-care physician's office with back pain, neck
19 pain, leg pain, they could be getting an opiate on
20 top of that.
21 So I wonder, has there been any attention
22 paid to how New York State can crack down on
23 prescribers that are writing these narcotics, and
24 how they plan to monitor those narcotics once they
25 leave the doors?
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1 SENATOR NOZZOLIO: Certainly, I-STOP was the
2 first step.
3 We are deliberating what, if any,
4 recommendations we should make about changing
5 I-STOP.
6 That's something that's certainly on the
7 table: changing it, helping it, expanding it.
8 One thing we heard last week in New York City
9 was mind-boggling -- and I'd like it if any county
10 has any idea -- that adding insult to injury in this
11 problem, is the fact that your tax dollars, through
12 Medicaid, are being used by unscrupulous people to,
13 basically, pay people in homeless shelters to use
14 their Medicaid card, take it to getting a phony
15 prescription, and doing this thousands and thousands
16 and thousands of times, hundreds times, anyway, in
17 the city.
18 The pharmacies are being fraudulently --
19 there are fraudulent pharmacies, in the city of
20 New York, particularly.
21 There are fraudulent individuals who are
22 using the Medicaid system to gain.
23 And this is where it gets real: What could
24 treatment and prevention do with a billion dollars a
25 year?
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1 "A billion dollars a year," that's the money
2 that's being stolen from our taxpayers now in this
3 process.
4 Law enforcement informed us last week -- and
5 it was mind-boggling to me, Mr. Chairman -- it was
6 mind-boggling on how the organized crime is,
7 basically, taking over the Medicaid system, on
8 taking, particularly Oxycontin, those opiates, and
9 taking them and setting up a whole new on-the-street
10 market for these products.
11 And it's not the small dealer.
12 You know, even though the small dealer has
13 debts, it starts in taking a multi-billion-dollar
14 theft from the taxpayers of the state.
15 SENATOR BOYLE: And that was only two cases.
16 We had two cases, of a billion dollars;
17 $500 million each.
18 ERICA TURNER: I believe that.
19 I work throughout New York State, and I go
20 into many addiction centers.
21 I have New York State in its entirety as my
22 territory, but I also have the state of Vermont, and
23 Vermont is going through the same thing.
24 How does the State get involved to help?
25 And I encourage you all, if you get a moment,
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1 to check out last month's issue of "Rolling Stone"
2 magazine.
3 They had an amazing article about heroin
4 addiction and opioid addiction, and how law
5 enforcement and state regulations, and even the side
6 of the addict, all played into this article.
7 It's really a great article.
8 SENATOR NOZZOLIO: Thank you very much.
9 ERICA TURNER: Thank you.
10 SENATOR NOZZOLIO: Other questions?
11 Keep them coming.
12 SENATOR BOYLE: I just recognize
13 Maryann Marshall.
14 SENATOR NOZZOLIO: Maryann Marshall? Is she
15 here?
16 MARYANN MARSHALL: Good afternoon.
17 My name is Maryann Marshall, and I'm from
18 Rochester, New York, and I just wanted to share my
19 brief story with you.
20 My son Jonathan [ph.], who is 26 years old,
21 is a heroin addict. This happened six years prior,
22 and he has devastated and attacked our whole family.
23 There's no drug there out on the streets
24 that's more deadly than heroin.
25 We have to come up with an action plan that
87
1 will encompass us all to try and combat this growing
2 epidemic that is destroying and killing off our
3 family members.
4 The addiction has engulfed my son's whole
5 life. It's all about the drug, and how to get it,
6 and get the money to support the habit.
7 These addicts will turn to stealing and
8 robbing from their families, and committing crimes
9 out to the streets.
10 While my son has taken the route of
11 committing petty larcenies, and has landed himself
12 in our local jail several times.
13 And each and every time he goes to jail, and
14 I try to get him rehab help, it's like hitting a
15 brick wall, because he'll lose his insurance, and,
16 we have to start the whole process over once he's
17 gone to jail.
18 And the last time, he spent nine months in
19 jail, and got out and overdosed within a week.
20 So, obviously, jail isn't the way to go with
21 this.
22 We need long-term -- I have to agree with
23 Kevin, long-term addiction centers that can nourish
24 these people back to their self.
25 Okay?
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1 It just destroys their whole life.
2 And, we have no funding for this.
3 The detox in the jail I feel is inhumane,
4 because they'll throw them in jail, they have
5 nothing to help them come off of this, and it's a
6 very dangerous situation.
7 They can go into a coma.
8 They can have seizures.
9 They can go into cardiac arrest.
10 So we really have to come together and, you
11 know, try to get long-term rehab for these addicts
12 and bring them back to their normal self.
13 SENATOR NOZZOLIO: Even in Monroe County it's
14 difficult to find providers giving any kind of
15 assistance.
16 MARYANN MARSHALL: Monroe County I feel is
17 the worst. We can't -- and these judges are not
18 going with the drug courts.
19 You know, some of them are against -- I live
20 in Greece, New York, and the judges out there are
21 not for the drug courts.
22 SENATOR NOZZOLIO: Well, thank you very
23 much --
24 MARYANN MARSHALL: Thank you.
25 SENATOR NOZZOLIO: -- for presenting this.
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1 [Applause.]
2 Jon.
3 DA JON BUDELMANN: Thank you, Senator.
4 You touched on a point with the prescription
5 fraud, the Medicaid fraud, that we've seen here
6 locally, and it's where I mentioned the
7 180 oxycodones a month.
8 The statistics are something like, less
9 30 percent of the people who prescribed those types
10 of drugs are actually using them when they are
11 blood-tested or drug-tested for that.
12 Perhaps that would be an important part of a
13 monitoring, to require drug tests, to make sure that
14 they're actually using what they're being given for
15 free at taxpayer expense, that is then ending up on
16 the market causing overdoses, causing sales,
17 causing -- and attack the problem kind of in a smart
18 way.
19 The other point, if I could make one, I think
20 the -- excellent: Trying to reach the young people
21 in whatever way we can reach them is I think what we
22 have to do.
23 Whether it's D.A.R.E., which I thought was
24 very successful, but, whether it's young people,
25 like Superstar, going out and talking to them at
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1 their level, Lon going into alleys and finding where
2 they are to try to reach them.
3 Outreach.
4 But, the ounce of prevention is worth pounds
5 of cure.
6 Whether it be incarceration or the heavy cost
7 of treatment, if we can avoid that misery, if we can
8 avoid the loss of life, and the consumption of
9 resources, by spending a little bit up front to
10 avoid it, I think we'd be very smart to do that.
11 And I know we're not talking about
12 legalization of marijuana or other drugs here this
13 morning, but I think we are, because the message
14 that's sent is important.
15 The young people are watching, they're
16 looking, they're listening.
17 If we legalize certain drugs, we had the
18 synthetic marijuana, and what they called
19 "bath salts," which was another synthetic-drug
20 problem a few years ago, and the young people are
21 using it.
22 They were bringing it to school.
23 They thought, Well, if it's legal, it's safe.
24 We can use it.
25 And it couldn't be further from the truth.
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1 Prescription drugs, well, if doctors give
2 them out, it must be safe.
3 Not so, unless it's prescribed for them under
4 medical supervision.
5 So, too, if you say, "Well, marijuana is
6 legal," the number of people legally using marijuana
7 is going to go through the roof, particularly young
8 people.
9 And the heroin addiction has hit our young
10 people, ages 18 to 25, the hardest.
11 That's who's getting hit, that's who's
12 overdosing, that's who's dying. That's who we
13 really have to worry about.
14 And I think it all plays into the same
15 message, which is: They're not safe drugs. Whether
16 you want to call it a gateway drug, or you want to
17 date yourself, it's a progressive.
18 You start with smoking something like
19 marijuana, which is an illegal, illicit substance.
20 You then move to smoking or snorting something like
21 heroin.
22 And it's not a huge -- once you've decided
23 you're going to start down illegal drugs, and
24 smoking things other than, you know, nothing, you're
25 taking a step.
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1 And if we say it's okay to take this step,
2 we're sending a very strong message to young people.
3 And I would be very surprised to hear that
4 our numbers of other drug use don't go through the
5 roof, also.
6 SENATOR NOZZOLIO: Thank you, Jon.
7 Nelson.
8 NELSON ACQUILANO: My name is
9 Nelson Acquilano. I'm the director of the Council
10 on Alcoholism and Addictions of the Finger Lakes.
11 We serve the five-county central Finger Lakes
12 region of Ontario, Wayne, Seneca, Schuyler, and
13 Yates counties.
14 We are designated by the State as a
15 prevention agency, so we do go into the schools.
16 Last year we had over 7,500 prevention
17 activities, over 1,000 classroom presentations.
18 And I wanted to say, what I passed out to you
19 is about 20 recommendations on this issue.
20 I'm only going on cover three, and I would
21 like to just -- I'll phrase it in the form off a
22 question.
23 The first one, though, is -- well, before
24 I begin, I want to say, my observation of this is,
25 I think we're on the beginning of the epidemic of
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1 heroin.
2 I'm seeing things in the community, and
3 nationally, that's saying that this is the start of
4 that epidemic. And if we don't jump on it right
5 away, we're going to be back here in two or
6 three years, or talking about putting more people in
7 prison, and it's just going to absolutely destroy
8 us.
9 So, number one, I want to say thank you;
10 thank you for this critical thing.
11 And I have much gratitude for all of you, and
12 for everything you've done to bring this to light.
13 I'm going to skip over my preliminary
14 remarks, but I just wanted to say, out of all the
15 recommendations, there's three.
16 Okay?
17 The first one, we talked about, is the
18 budget.
19 Now, with the consolidation of DSAS and DAAA,
20 we lost at least a third of our funding.
21 Then in 1995, Governor Pataki cut us another
22 10 percent to drug abuse.
23 And then we were held stagnant.
24 And then when Governor Cuomo came in, he cut
25 us another 10 percent.
94
1 So what's going on with all these cuts?
2 We have been held so low, we haven't had time
3 and energy and resources to do what we need to do to
4 address all of these problems.
5 Margie talked about youth-counseling
6 services.
7 I have a school-based youth-counseling
8 program in Yates County and in Schuyler County, all
9 right, but youth-counseling services are dying out
10 throughout the state.
11 The other one, Brad mentioned SBIRT.
12 We had a program and it was highly
13 successful. It was called "HIS"
14 (Hospital Intervention Services).
15 It was great.
16 It lost its funding, and it died out.
17 Hospital-based, and it died out throughout
18 the state.
19 This budget is the number one thing that we
20 do have to address, and I have some statistics in
21 there to look at it.
22 But, please, it is budget.
23 Without the resources, there is very little
24 that the community, treatment especially, when you
25 have long waiting lists and you can't hire more
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1 counselors, we can't respond.
2 The second item I want to talk about is the
3 health-insurance coverage.
4 Do you know the best resource we had in the
5 Finger Lakes was the detoxification program at
6 Geneva General Hospital?
7 They treated over 10,000 addicts over a
8 25-year period.
9 But guess what? Health insurance killed that
10 program.
11 Okay?
12 You have to -- oh, "not medically necessary,"
13 I think that's the term that they use now.
14 So I would support legislation that gives the
15 directive back to the physician or the health-care
16 provider that makes the recommendation for
17 treatment.
18 Take it away from health-insurance companies
19 because it's a conflict of interest.
20 And my board of directors has asked me to
21 come here and to tell you, we need that detox
22 program at Geneva General Hospital, Finger Lakes
23 Health.
24 We need that program back, but it's not going
25 to happen.
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1 SENATOR NOZZOLIO: Excuse me, Nelson.
2 Is there, at Auburn Community Hospital, any
3 type of similar program?
4 DR. JOHN RICCIO: No, we don't have a
5 program.
6 I mean, it sounds like it would be perfect
7 for some of the initiatives that we're looking at
8 with the community.
9 We're working with Mr. Bizzari, and a few of
10 the other people in the community, as well.
11 The only thing we have right now in Auburn,
12 to my knowledge, is CHAD, which is remarkable, and
13 it's worked quite well, but it is limited.
14 SENATOR NOZZOLIO: Thank you.
15 NELSON ACQUILANO: And then the third one,
16 and this is going to be the challenge, all right? --
17 councils on alcoholism often receive calls for help
18 from parents, or from a husband regarding the wife,
19 the wife regarding the husband, and they don't want
20 to come in for help. They don't want to accept a
21 referral.
22 So, did you know 38 states have some form of
23 a civil commitment, an involuntary commitment, into
24 treatment?
25 38 states have some form of that.
97
1 Okay?
2 Florida has the Marchman Act.
3 Other states I think have the Casey Act, or
4 perhaps a variation of the Baker Act.
5 What I would propose is legislation that
6 would not -- not criminal, okay. And sometimes
7 I tell people, have them arrested.
8 We get them, unfortunately, into the criminal
9 justice system where they will get treatment, go
10 through a drug court, and so forth, but that then
11 turns a person who has a disease into a criminal.
12 I don't want to do that anymore.
13 Let's have a civil commitment for people and
14 help them to get the treatment they can.
15 If you do believe it's a disease, a disease
16 of insanity, where your cognitive faculties are
17 affected, then this will help.
18 So please review that.
19 If there's anything else I can do --
20 SENATOR NOZZOLIO: Excellent points, Nelson.
21 Thank you very much.
22 [Applause.]
23 SENATOR BOYLE: Nelson, really quickly, those
24 are excellent points. And thank you for all your
25 suggestions.
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1 Maybe we just take your cover off and put
2 ours on it and we'll say it's our ideas.
3 [Laughter.]
4 SENATOR BOYLE: But in terms of
5 "medical necessity," that's definitely part of the
6 legislation we're looking at.
7 And the civil confinement, it's a tough
8 issue, obviously, but we have cases on Long Island
9 and upstate, we've talked to, treatment providers
10 advising families how to have their children
11 arrested just so they get off the streets.
12 It's not a great system.
13 We need to change it, without a doubt.
14 SENATOR NOZZOLIO: Other questions?
15 Yes.
16 TERRI WHITT [ph.]: Hello, gentlemen.
17 My name is Terri Whitt [ph.], and I'm the
18 central region prevention resource director.
19 And I just want to piggyback on something
20 that Brad had said, and also what one of the
21 gentlemen up here said, regarding an ounce of
22 prevention is worth a pound of cure.
23 I just wanted you to be aware that the State,
24 through OASAS, already has prevention resource
25 centers. We're regionalized across the state.
99
1 And our mission is really to mentor and to
2 guide community coalitions.
3 We use data-driven, so it's based on local
4 data.
5 We use a prevention planning process, a
6 strategic plan, so that there is a good, solid,
7 logical roadway to run on.
8 We use environmental strategies, so they're
9 population-level changes, such as in regulations,
10 laws, things of that nature.
11 Other environmental strategies might be,
12 I think we were talking about social norms; changing
13 the way that the community thinks about drugs and
14 their perception of harm.
15 And, finally, in implementing the strategies,
16 it takes the whole community.
17 We use all the sectors of the community, and
18 they actually evaluate the results.
19 And these are implemented throughout the
20 state, but there's very little funding for this.
21 And as Brad mentioned, if we had a key person
22 in the different communities and counties, that
23 would be relatively little money spent on
24 prevention, so that, down the road, we don't have
25 these stories of heartache, and the money that is
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1 spent in time and resources and money.
2 SENATOR NOZZOLIO: Thank you.
3 Thank you very much.
4 [Applause.]
5 SENATOR NOZZOLIO: The Senators have to get
6 on the road in a few minutes. We have no more than
7 ten.
8 Let's start with Sheriff Povero, and then
9 just flip your question as fast as possible, and
10 we'll get them on the road.
11 Sheriff.
12 SHERIFF PHIL POVERO: Thank you, Senator.
13 Thank you for the opportunity to be here
14 today, and thank you all for taking time out to
15 listen to these -- this great information.
16 And I don't want to be repetitive. Just
17 would like to take a minute to, perhaps, amplify
18 some of the points that we've heard, and some of the
19 issues that we're seeing in Ontario County, and
20 specifically within the Ontario County Sheriff's
21 Office.
22 Within the past month, our emergency
23 911 dispatchers have, literally, saved the lives of
24 four persons that have overdosed on heroin.
25 Our dispatchers receive calls throughout the
101
1 evening from people that, fortunately, you know,
2 whether they're aware of the Good Samaritan Law, or
3 not, are calling.
4 And that, as an aside, is something that
5 I agree needs to be publicized more; that that
6 program, that that law, is out there and people need
7 to call.
8 But the callers call in.
9 The story is, basically, that, my boyfriend,
10 girlfriend, my friend, there's a needle sticking out
11 of his or her leg, they've overdosed.
12 And we are very fortunate in the county that,
13 in recent years, we purchased emergency medical
14 dispatch information, which our dispatchers are
15 trained on, and which is readily available; is there
16 next to them on the phone.
17 SENATOR NOZZOLIO: Excuse me, Sheriff.
18 Is that the way it is in Cayuga County, too?
19 SHERIFF DAVID GOULD: That's under the
20 different direction of the sheriff.
21 SENATOR NOZZOLIO: You do -- do not -- you
22 911 --
23 Is our 911 director here?
24 SHERIFF DAVID GOULD: I believe she's here.
25 SENATOR NOZZOLIO: But it's similar in
102
1 Cayuga County as in Ontario.
2 Thank you.
3 Excuse me, Sheriff.
4 SHERIFF PHIL POVERO: That's all right.
5 And this program is out there. It's
6 available from several vendors.
7 They were able to give CPR instructions.
8 And, again, as we go on, a lot of this
9 discussion reverts back to funding.
10 But, again, as a particular suggestion, you
11 know, looking at 911 centers in our state, seeing if
12 our dispatchers are trained in emergency-medical
13 dispatching.
14 And if not, perhaps making sure that funding
15 is available so that those localities,
16 municipalities, can purchase this equipment so their
17 dispatchers, as ours have, can save lives over the
18 telephone.
19 As we speak, the chiefs and the sheriffs that
20 are here with me are colleagues, also on our
21 Finger Lakes Law Enforcement Academy, which I know
22 the Senator is aware of.
23 And at this time, we're very fortunate to
24 have the Department of Criminal Justice Services
25 from the state come to our training facility in
103
1 Canandaigua.
2 And we're hosting the entire region right
3 now, as we speak, with a trained -- the trainer
4 session on police administering Narcan.
5 These individual trainers will go back to
6 their police departments.
7 And we've reached out from as far away as
8 Oswego, to Batavia, to Elmira, and go back and train
9 their officers on the proper use of Narcan.
10 My request on this is that, this type of
11 training not only continue, but there are no
12 programs now -- there are programs now out there
13 available, making the Narcan available to
14 law enforcement.
15 We appreciate that.
16 We need that to continue at low cost, if not
17 no cost.
18 It's been working well, as has been pointed
19 out from the emergency-medical community for years.
20 On Long Island, and in Rensselaer County,
21 law enforcement has been experimenting with this
22 and --
23 SENATOR NOZZOLIO: State Police just have --
24 excuse me again, Sheriff.
25 Do you have -- our two counties represented,
104
1 do you have -- three counties, I'm sorry.
2 Do either of the three counties have any
3 funding for those antidote kits?
4 SHERIFF DAVID GOULD: Yes, Senator.
5 We have already received a grant and got
6 accepted, so we will be training very soon, and all
7 our deputies will have them.
8 SENATOR NOZZOLIO: How about Seneca County?
9 SHERIFF JACK STENBERG: [Speaking without a
10 microphone/inaudible.]
11 SENATOR NOZZOLIO: Sheriff Povero?
12 SHERIFF PHIL POVERO: Yes, sir, we've applied
13 with the State, and our grant is in.
14 SENATOR NOZZOLIO: The pool of funds are out
15 there, but you're still waiting, whether or not you
16 receive them?
17 SHERIFF DAVID GOULD: We've already received
18 it. We will be training very quickly.
19 SHERIFF PHIL POVERO: So that training is
20 going on now. We're very grateful that the State
21 has brought that to our area, one of the first to
22 provide it regionally, and we're grateful for that.
23 On the topic of going back to, as
24 Mr. Superstar and others have mentioned, about
25 children and students relating to people, there are
105
1 many adults and role models in our school system
2 today that I'm sure, if were driven to it and were
3 committed to it, and had the passion to work with
4 children, I know that we would find our children
5 would be eager to confide in them.
6 The -- that individual in that program that's
7 particularly passionate to me, is the
8 school-resource-officer program.
9 Again, there's a lot of -- some misconception
10 about the role of the school-resource-officer
11 program as primarily a law-enforcement official.
12 It really needs to be clarified that that
13 role is often dwarfed by the other roles of, not
14 only teacher, but counselor.
15 And in schools where we have school resource
16 officers, we can vouch, as can our district
17 attorneys, of the numerous disclosures that are made
18 to trained police officers that student build
19 positive rapports in, for the purpose of, you know,
20 reporting suspicious incidents, or just coming and
21 talking about being a victim of something, either in
22 school or out of school.
23 It's a tremendous program.
24 I've been around a long time, seen a lot of
25 law-enforcement programs come and go.
106
1 This one is truly successful, and it's
2 something that is universally accepted, but the
3 question continues to be: That's great, but who's
4 going to pay for it?
5 And that's just my suggestion for that.
6 Final, on the sheriffs' side, as operators of
7 our jails, and we've pointed out we're seeing so
8 many of the issues, in April of this year, we
9 admitted 198 persons to the Ontario County Jail.
10 In interviewing these people in subsequent
11 medical discussions with them, that they're
12 admitting, 118 have some sort of substance-abuse
13 issue that they're involved in their lives.
14 13 actually admitted a they were heroin addicts that
15 were being admitted.
16 So the -- my whole point is to say that, the
17 heroin issue, from a sheriffs' standpoint, is
18 impacting our entire operation.
19 And, collectively, we are trying to do what
20 we can. And we appreciate your efforts to hear our
21 concerns.
22 Thank you.
23 SENATOR NOZZOLIO: Thank you, Sheriff.
24 [Applause.]
25 PASTOR DALE ANDREWS: My name is
107
1 Dale Andrews. I'm a pastor from Geneva.
2 I come at this at a different angle.
3 Obviously, you know, there's a government.
4 You know, you feel it's a government problem, you
5 feel it's a law-enforcement problem, and you feel
6 it's a health problem.
7 And all of you are correct.
8 But I see it as a church problem.
9 What I have experienced, I work at the
10 Seneca County Jail. I go out and do some ministry
11 there.
12 What I've learned from that experience, and
13 I've asked the question -- I like to know what the
14 root of problems are.
15 That's one reason why I feel it's a church
16 problem, and this is my opinion:
17 I don't see them as drug addicts.
18 I don't see them as alcoholics.
19 It's a sin addiction, is what it is; and, so,
20 I go at it with that angle, and I'm able to reach
21 in.
22 But I've asked the question: Why are you on
23 these drugs? What is it that's causing this?
24 And the root of the problem really is, for
25 the vast majority of them, it's a coping issue.
108
1 They don't know how to cope with the things
2 that they've had to deal with in life.
3 And so when we're talking about our school
4 programs and counseling, and things like that,
5 really what these young children need, and young
6 adults, and different ones, they've lost loved ones,
7 they're from broken homes, their parents are addicts
8 or in jail. Many of them have been abused.
9 And the vast majority have told me
10 personally, the reason why they've turned to that is
11 because it's how they hide their pain. It's how
12 they've learned to cope.
13 And, so, as we're counseling to them as young
14 people, keep that in mind.
15 You know, they need a positive role model.
16 They need somebody that's going to love them,
17 and show them how to respond when life gets hard,
18 because it gets hard for all of us.
19 Now, on the prevention side of it, I can
20 encourage the whole room here -- there's 100 people
21 here.
22 I'm assuming I'm not the only person that
23 goes to church.
24 Right? [Raises hand.]
25 [Laughter.]
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1 PASTOR DALE ANDREWS: I feel it's safe to
2 assume.
3 My church, last September, started what's
4 a -- "Celebrate Recovery Program." It's 12-step
5 Christ-centered recovery program.
6 12-step programs work.
7 And what I would ask every person in this
8 room to do, is go back to your community, find a
9 church.
10 If there is no church in your community
11 offering a Christ-centered 12-step program, start
12 one.
13 You be the catalyst. Take part in it.
14 We're all asking, you know, these gentlemen
15 up here, you know, What are you going to do for us?
16 Well, what are we going to do for them?
17 Okay?
18 So we can all take part.
19 It costs my church less than $500 to start
20 this program.
21 What church can't afford $500 to reach out to
22 the community?
23 Amen?
24 So, anyway, I thank you.
25 SENATOR NOZZOLIO: Thank you.
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1 [Applause.]
2 PASTOR DALE ANDREWS: I'm sorry, one more
3 thing, and this is just an observation again.
4 When it comes to funding and money and
5 programs that's going on, and this is just a
6 personal opinion, I know of a -- there's a
7 clean-needle program that takes place, helping
8 heroin addicts get their clean needles.
9 And what I've seen and I have experienced,
10 and I've had testimony also from people that take
11 part in that program, really what that is, is a
12 substitute for the heroin.
13 And, so, rather than helping them in a
14 program to get them off the heroin, they're just
15 substituting that addiction for another.
16 And, so, if we could look into that
17 particular clean-needle program and find out, you
18 know, would our money be better spent, perhaps, at
19 CHAD or someplace where they're actually getting off
20 of these things, versus just substituting.
21 Thank you.
22 [Applause.]
23 JACKIE MORELLE [ph.]: Hi. My name is
24 Jackie Morelle [ph.], and I'm a credentialed
25 alcohol- and substance-abuse counselor, and I am a
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1 counselor over at CHAD.
2 We run into the problem all the time.
3 We have opiate users and heroin users coming
4 in every single day.
5 I'm sure Kevin gets a call two, three times a
6 day of what parents, family, friends, can do with
7 these people.
8 And, unfortunately, when they come in,
9 they'll say, You know, I'm using this much, I'm
10 using a bundle a day.
11 And, we have no place to send them.
12 There's not enough detox programs.
13 There's SBH [unintelligible] over in Syracuse
14 and SBH in Rochester, and they have long waiting
15 lists. And for people who don't have insurance,
16 that's costly.
17 So the first place to get these people who
18 want the help immediately is detox, and we just
19 don't have them.
20 And then, when they're in detox, a lot of
21 times they come back to the community, where, now,
22 they're coming back to where they were, and they
23 don't have the coping skills and the tools that they
24 need to be able to stabilize themselves back in that
25 community so soon.
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1 So, then, for detox programs to be able to
2 refer them to the inpatient programs where they are
3 able to stabilize, and get -- and educate themselves
4 and gather the tools and the coping skills they need
5 to be able to come back home if that's where they
6 choose to go.
7 So I guess, on the treatment side, we're
8 seeing a lot of frustrations with getting the heroin
9 users, opiate users, into detox first, because
10 inpatient programs won't take them because they need
11 to go to detox first, so we get the runaround.
12 Okay?
13 Well, you can't take them, and they can't get
14 to detox because there's such a long wait list, and
15 then we lose them.
16 So that's like the frustration we have.
17 We use Van Dyke often. And a lot of times
18 Suzanne's, like, Well, they have to go to detox --
19 SENATOR NOZZOLIO: Is Van Dyke full?
20 JACKIE MORELLE [ph.]: Yeah, they're full.
21 And they only -- they have very few female
22 beds. That's the thing that we run into a lot.
23 There's not many inpatient programs that have
24 many women beds available.
25 A lot of them are for the men.
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1 So we'll call Van Dyke to try to get a client
2 in there, and they can't take them because they need
3 detox first.
4 And we don't have the resources to send these
5 people to detox because there's not enough of them
6 out there.
7 SENATOR NOZZOLIO: The Chairman and I are
8 just bouncing an idea around.
9 What about taking the assets seized from the
10 criminals who are fraudulently taking taxpayers'
11 dollars through illegal sale and distribution of
12 Vicodin and other -- Oxycontin, rather, and other
13 prescription medicines or other drugs themselves,
14 heroin itself, raw heroin, and taking that and
15 seizing it to use for treatment?
16 It would be a treatment facilities, either to
17 help the coalitions, to help Dick Van Dyke, expand,
18 and other types of drug-treatment providers to have
19 places to go.
20 CHAD doesn't have a place to go. It direct
21 people to go there. Right? It's that kind of a
22 deal?
23 Okay.
24 So the thing is to have, as you indicated,
25 having places to go, and for treatment.
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1 And I don't think it's been fully explored.
2 We will explore it, to see if we can do it,
3 but, to take that seizure and use it for treatment.
4 Yes.
5 Wait, wait.
6 Sheriff.
7 UNKNOWN SPEAKER: [Not using a microphone.]
8 (Unintelligible) think it's 40 percent of the
9 seizures.
10 UNKNOWN SPEAKER: To OASAS already.
11 SENATOR NOZZOLIO: And the fact is, that
12 40 percent going to the general fund, it is taxpayer
13 money.
14 But let's take a portion of that, if not all
15 of it, and use it for treatment.
16 That would, in fact, stop the supply chain,
17 wouldn't it?
18 Yes, Miss.
19 Thank you very much.
20 [Applause.]
21 ELIZABETH TOOMEY: Hi. My name is
22 Elizabeth Toomey, and I work for Prevention Network
23 in Onondaga County.
24 But I have been blessed, the last 3 years out
25 of 15, to be working with youth across Onondaga,
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1 Cayuga, and Oswego counties.
2 One of the things that I have seen in the
3 last 15 years is the shrinkage of dollars for
4 youth -- direct youth services in the community
5 level, not at the school-based level, because we go
6 into schools. But, at the community level where
7 kids want to be engaged after school, we're not
8 seeing that. Those dollars have shrank.
9 And, kids really want a place, a safe place,
10 that they can come, they can talk and have a voice.
11 And I just urge you to look at those -- look
12 at prevention, because if we have young people who
13 are resilient and learn these life skills when
14 they're the 18- and 25-year-olds that are headed off
15 to college, and more into that drug culture, that if
16 they have the skills they need, we can prevent them
17 from this.
18 So, the prevention dollars is where we
19 really -- along with the treatment dollars, is where
20 we need to be looking to build successful young
21 people.
22 SENATOR NOZZOLIO: Thank you very much.
23 [Applause.]
24 SENATOR NOZZOLIO: As Speaker, I just want to
25 remind everyone that the Chairman has to get on the
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1 road by 3:00, so, let's focus.
2 PASTOR FLOYD MARSH: I'll be brief.
3 My name is Pastor Floyd Marsh. I'm the
4 pastor of the Harvest Field Baptist Church in
5 Fayette, New York.
6 And I appreciate this time that you've given
7 to me today, to just -- I'm not going to share my
8 personal story, but our home has been hit with the
9 heroin-addiction problem.
10 And our son, 23, is going through an
11 addiction program right now.
12 He was arrested and placed in the
13 Seneca County Jail.
14 And, actually, the young lady Caitlin [ph.]
15 that works there intervened, and she diagnosed him
16 with the heroin addiction. And then he was sent
17 from there to Dick Van Dyke.
18 And from Dick Van Dyke, after he completed
19 that program, he went to CARS, which is
20 Cayuga Addiction Recovery Services.
21 But my point that I want to make, and he's
22 doing real well, but he's now faced with long-term
23 prison because of the crime that he's been
24 implicated in committing.
25 But what I wanted to address was the fact
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1 that he was homeschooled. He was raised in a home
2 where there wasn't any alcohol whatsoever, no
3 cigarettes, no R-rated movies. Just a little bit of
4 dancing between myself and my wife.
5 But this is such a pervasive problem.
6 And I was just -- when Alex was arrested, and
7 I went to the police department in Seneca Falls,
8 I was dumbfounded to begin with that he was even
9 implicated in a crime.
10 And then when I was there, the police officer
11 encouraged him to share with me that he had a heroin
12 addiction.
13 So it was like a double whammy that evening.
14 And we've been devastated ever since.
15 In fact, there hasn't been a day that hasn't
16 gone by that we've wept for our son.
17 And this problem is so pervasive.
18 And, I look at it on a grand scale.
19 We've been looking at locally, which we need
20 to have local programs to take care of this heroin
21 epidemic and the opioids.
22 In fact, Alex, he began with the prescription
23 opioids, and then he was introduced to the heroin
24 after that, and his downward spiral was rapid.
25 It was only a matter of months before he was
118
1 arrested as a result of his heroin addiction.
2 But I see this as a greater problem that we
3 have.
4 In fact, early on in the discussion, it was
5 said that a majority of the heroin is making its way
6 across the Mexican border.
7 Not only that, but what I've read, 25 percent
8 is coming from Afghanistan. Another 75 percent is
9 coming across the Mexican border.
10 What we need to do, as a state, is encourage
11 the federal government to do something about our
12 borders to protect us from the heroin.
13 And if we could reduce the amount that is
14 coming across the borders, maybe we could reduce the
15 problem locally, as well.
16 [Applause.]
17 PASTOR FLOYD MARSH: Normally people say
18 "Amen" after that.
19 [Laughter.]
20 PASTOR FLOYD MARSH: But in all seriousness,
21 I was reading an article after -- because I was
22 dumbfounded that my son would be a heroin addict.
23 I was dumbfounded that he would be implicated
24 in a crime and be arrested.
25 We were just flabbergasted.
119
1 So I began doing some research, and I found
2 that, with that 25 percent that is coming from
3 Afghanistan, I started looking into how terrorism is
4 actually supported. And it's through the drugs.
5 And our government, and I can't remember the
6 year, but our government gave the Afghani government
7 $250 million to build a hydroelectric plant.
8 What have they used that hydroelectric plant
9 for? To irrigate their poppy fields.
10 Not only that, but we allow the borders to be
11 open for the Mexican cartels to bring the drugs
12 across.
13 In fact, I was reading an article that was in
14 the "New York Times," I believe, and one of the
15 sheriffs said: "There's a very, very big opposition
16 to calling these organizations what they really are,
17 'narco terrorists.'"
18 He said, "When you label them as
19 'narco terrorists,' we can pursue and target them
20 under the Patriot Act.
21 "This is one of the major things that we need
22 to do because of the level of sophistication they
23 have.
24 "We have a saying on the border, 'If it gets
25 by us today, it's going to be your problem
120
1 tomorrow.'"
2 And it's our problem today, right at this
3 moment.
4 And I believe that our honorable Senators,
5 State Senators, our State Legislature, needs to
6 solicit our national government to do something
7 about this problem.
8 [Applause.]
9 PASTOR FLOYD MARSH: Because, personally,
10 it's my problem.
11 And if it could be my problem, it could be
12 anyone's problem.
13 We need to do something.
14 Not just talk, but we need to do something as
15 a country.
16 Thank you.
17 SENATOR NOZZOLIO: Thank you, Floyd.
18 [Applause.]
19 SENATOR NOZZOLIO: We -- I apologize.
20 I put everybody on notice, 3:00.
21 I think this will be our last word.
22 TIMOTHY DONAVAN: Thank you, Senator.
23 My name is Timothy Donovan, local resident.
24 I am a community advocate.
25 I want to share about the walk, but, first,
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1 I want to echo -- first, we do have a meeting in
2 Auburn. It's a spiritual meeting.
3 It's every Saturday morning at
4 St. Mary's Church over here on Clark Street. It's a
5 12-step program, and they got two wonderful
6 facilitators, and the numbers have grown.
7 And they've been -- they're there.
8 Something's driving them there.
9 It's the word.
10 I tried to share with that, but they're
11 coming. And it's a wonderful 12-step program.
12 I just wanted to share what the pastor said.
13 You know, I do meetings.
14 I'm in recovery. I'm a recovering alcoholic.
15 And I see it as a spiritual program. That's
16 what's kept me sober.
17 I do meetings at the jail on Tuesday and
18 Thursday nights. I try to provide a meeting for the
19 inmates at the county jail.
20 And I do go into -- I'll just say a pod
21 example, the women's pod, and, we'll bring up a
22 topic, and usually family comes up.
23 And I have to share what he said.
24 They are hurting. They don't know how to
25 cope. They're in such pain.
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1 They tell me, "We can't wait to get out there
2 and use again."
3 They share about their broken homes.
4 The messages we see on TV --
5 SENATOR NOZZOLIO: Do you have an event
6 coming up, that you had mentioned to me?
7 TIMOTHY DONAVAN: Yes, yes.
8 SENATOR NOZZOLIO: Would you let people know
9 about it.
10 TIMOTHY DONAVAN: Yes.
11 I just had to share to that: spirituality can
12 help.
13 Thank you.
14 I'm so glad some of the families are here.
15 A few other families are here that lost some loved
16 ones.
17 I'm just happy to note, we are having a
18 Community Suicide-Awareness Memory Walk.
19 It will be here Saturday, June 7th, at
20 12 noon.
21 We're going to kick it off here at the
22 Auburn City Hall steps, and it will proceed down
23 West Genesee Street, cross over, come back. We're
24 going to go around downtown.
25 It's an awareness walk.
123
1 And awareness is critical to one's community.
2 There are a lot of individuals out there that
3 don't know what's going on in our community, and no
4 fault of their own.
5 But, I just want to make the announcement:
6 This will be one of the shirts.
7 We have some other creativity things planned.
8 And I invite you, Senator, and everybody to
9 come back and walk with us on that day, as, again,
10 awareness is critical.
11 And this is in memory, if I can say, of
12 Jessica, Christopher Wilkes [ph.], Trish Maharve
13 [ph.], and Christopher Sosci [ph.].
14 So, thank you.
15 SENATOR NOZZOLIO: Thank you very much.
16 [Applause.]
17 SENATOR NOZZOLIO: Senator O'Mara.
18 SENATOR O'MARA: Yes, we're on closing
19 remarks.
20 Thank you very much for being here today, and
21 sharing with us this information.
22 I just wanted to close by saying, those of
23 you that are from the southern Finger Lakes area,
24 like Pastor Marsh, I believe you said you're from
25 Bath, we are having a similar forum to this next
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1 Friday in Elmira, at Elmira College, from ten to
2 noon.
3 And, certainly, notices are going out about
4 that. Had some great coverage in the local
5 newspapers down that way today.
6 And I'm looking forward to input from that
7 region, as well.
8 But thank you for your input today.
9 SENATOR BOYLE: Thank you, Senator.
10 And thank you, Senator Valesky and
11 Senator Nozzolio, for hosting this forum, and for
12 all the panelists and for all of the input.
13 It was just what we needed: the type of
14 information, the suggestions, and recommendations.
15 I can tell you, without a doubt, we've got
16 some good ideas today.
17 It's going to be in our final report.
18 It's going to be in legislation, which is
19 going to be passed.
20 And, for Jessica, and all the other victims,
21 we're going to make sure that this epidemic is
22 brought under control.
23 Thanks so much.
24 Thanks for allowing me to be here.
25 [Applause.]
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1 SENATOR NOZZOLIO: I just want to thank
2 everyone for being here. You did a marvelous job.
3 We have great input.
4 You stimulated a number of ideas.
5 I wish we could be here two hours longer.
6 But, we certainly have our doors, our ears,
7 our e-mails, open to any suggestion that you may
8 have, that you'd like to follow up through. My
9 contact information is available.
10 And that if you'd like to share with any of
11 the other Senators, as well, I'd be glad to do so.
12 I want to thank our panel for their
13 participation. You've really made this an excellent
14 forum. Thank you very much for being here.
15 Last, but certainly not least, I want to
16 thank Michele and Kevin for your courage and your
17 support.
18 And, we have a lot of work to do, and you
19 just made us more incentive to do so.
20 Thank you very, very much.
21 [Applause.]
22 (Whereupon, at approximately 3:03 p.m.,
23 the forum held before the New York State Joint
24 Task Force on Heroin and Opioid Addiction
25 concluded, and adjourned.)