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PANEL OFFERS 37 WAYS TO FIGHT HEROIN

As heroin-related deaths continue to spike in Central Florida, a task force of education, law-enforcement and public-health experts rolled out more than three dozen recommendations Monday to help Orange County fight the resurgence of the street drug blamed for 82 deaths last year.

The group suggested equipping police and deputies with naloxone, a medicine that instantly reverses the potentially fatal effect of heroin; increasing the number of so-called "detox beds" to treat addicts; and creating a program for heroin-addicted inmates in the Orange County Jail.

It's unclear how the task force's ideas will be paid for.

But the group, headed by Sheriff Jerry Demings, also offered some recommendations that may not require big money - such as additional training for medical professionals and a social-media campaign aimed at discouraging the use of heroin, sometimes viewed as a celebrity drug.

Demings compared heroin use to fooling with a loaded gun.

"It's akin to playing Russian roulette," said Demings, whose deputies answered six overdose calls this past weekend, three of them fatal.

Orange County deaths linked to heroin have soared from 14 in 2011 to 82 last year, a total that could grow as pending toxicology results are completed in some autopsy cases, according to statistics compiled by the Medical Examiner's Office.

Since August, when the task force began meeting, law-enforcement agencies have made 372 heroin-related arrests in Orange County, including more than 200 in December's Operation Snow Plow, a collaborative investigation of federal, state and local authorities, Demings said.

"I am certain that is really just the tip of the iceberg in terms of the magnitude of the problem," he said.

The 37 suggestions were offered after six months of study by the task force's subcommittees, which also looked into how to prevent heroin addiction and help youths understand heroin's dangers, how to expand treatment options and how to better equip health-care professionals.

George Ralls, an emergency room physician and county director of health and public safety, said the group also suggested a jail program to improve the chances that at-risk or heroin-addicted inmates stay clean once they get out.  Upon release from custody, the inmate would get medicine to help prevent a relapse.

"That shot ...  prevents them for the next 28 to 30 days from actually having the euphoric effects of using an opiate," he said.

But the inmate also would be required to participate in an outpatient treatment program, a longer recovery program.

"If we don't do something here, it's a missed opportunity," Ralls said.

On any given day, jail staff supervise about 350 inmates with a heroin problem, said Paulette Julien, deputy chief of administrative services at the jail.  The jail averages about 2,550 inmates a day.  Since the first of the year, 100 female inmates were pregnant and withdrawing from heroin.

Task force organizer Mayor Teresa Jacobs described the recommendations as achievable but admitted funding is "our next challenge."

Orlando police Chief John Mina said he would lobby for money to equip his officers with naxolone.  He said he might tap into cash and other assets seized from suspected drug dealers to pay for the prescription drug, also known as Narcan, an opiate antidote used in emergency situations.

Paramedics carry the drug used to counteract heroin, which attacks a person's central nervous system and can stop a person from breathing.

Time-share mogul David Siegel, whose 18-year-old daughter, Victoria, died last year from a fatal overdose of pain killers, praised the committee's work but said its members also should have recommended random drug testing in public schools, beginning with middle-schoolers.

"That's the only way that we're going to be able to stop the overdoses and stop the epidemic," he said.