Last week, Oregon Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum gathered experts from different fields together to talk about the fentanyl crisis facing the state. The all-day event included discussions of the scope of fentanyl addiction, what works to treat it, what young people know about the drug, and how law enforcement can effectively address the crisis. AG Rosenblum joins us to talk about what she learned, and what the next steps should be in addressing fentanyl abuse in the state.
This transcript was created by a computer and edited by a volunteer.
Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. We start today with the fentanyl crisis in Oregon. Last week, Oregon Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum convened experts from different fields to talk about the synthetic opioid. The all-day event included discussions of the scope of fentanyl addiction, what works to treat it, what young people know about the drug, and how law enforcement can effectively address the crisis. Ellen Rosenblum joins us now to talk about both what she learned and what she might do with that information. Welcome back to the show.
Ellen Rosenblum: Thanks so much. Great to be with you. Thanks for having me.
Miller: It’s good to have you on. Why did you convene this day-long meeting?
Rosenblum: That’s a great question. I was getting questions about what I’m doing about this problem and I started thinking, you know, not enough. I mean, our office does a lot in terms of interdiction, our criminal justice division, we have a unit that works on this called HIDTA [High Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas] in particular, which gets some federal funding. But truthfully, I didn’t feel like we were doing enough. And what I’m good at is convening people, bringing people together. I’ve hosted a lot of task forces over the years. We’ve had some great results with policy initiatives in areas like bias and hate, internet privacy, human trafficking, public records, police profiling. So why not this?
This is what is on our streets today and we have to do something about it because young people are dying and it is obviously a huge problem in our urban center but also in our rural areas. So it’s a statewide problem. Of course, it’s a national problem, a worldwide problem. But I thought we could do something. And I also was told that there had never been a convening where law enforcement, public safety experts were brought together with health care [and] public health treatment providers. And they’re kind of in the silos of working on this subject but not bringing folks together. So that’s what we did and I think very successfully.
Miller: I think I’m curious about those two groups then. [What is] the extent to which you see the way out of this, or solutions to this, as being from the law enforcement side, obviously your side? You’re the state’s chief legal officer or the state’s top prosecutor. And [to what] extent do you think this is a public health question, the realm of the county health authorities or the Oregon Health Authority?
Rosenblum: Well, I think it’s absolutely both and that’s what’s so important for people to realize, that we cannot interdict ourselves out of this problem. And we cannot simply provide the minimal amounts that we have of both mental health and substance use disorder treatment. We need to do both and we haven’t been doing well enough either. So let’s bring these groups together and make sure they’re hearing each other and understanding why both are critical to solving this problem. Because it’s not one or the other.
Miller: Let’s zero in on the piece that you would have, I imagine, a bigger role in. So what’s not happening, that could happen to prevent fentanyl from being on our streets today?
Rosenblum: Well, first of all, I don’t know that that necessarily is the area that I have the greater role in. Because truthfully, a big part of that is going to be the interdiction at the national [and] international levels. And we did have a speaker, a video, from literally the head of the Drug Enforcement Administration. Ann Milgram would tell you that this starts where the chemicals are being made for fentanyl. Although methamphetamine is a huge problem in Oregon as well, the chemicals for fentanyl are made in China. They
are then transported to Mexico and they are then, of course, turned into pills and other products and brought into our country.
Oregon itself, of course, has a role but a fairly small role in terms of interdiction. We’ve done a very good job. Actually, there have been some huge seizures in Oregon as there have been other parts of the country. Just this morning, I happened to be at a meeting in Boston, and learned of a massive drug bust here. Tens of millions of little heart-shaped candy-like fentanyl pills… a horrifying situation here in a small town called Lynn, here in Massachusetts.
So this is a nationwide, international problem that our little state of Oregon is not going to solve in terms of interdiction. But we’re doing a lot in that regard. So I don’t mean to suggest we’re not. But frankly, a big part of my role has to do with being the mama bear for the state of Oregon. That’s looking out for our kids, looking out for those who are most vulnerable. And let me tell you, we’ve got a serious problem with youth when it comes to the use of and the misuse of these products because of lack of awareness, lack of realization that what they’re trying, what they’re experimenting with, has the potential to kill.
So there’s a program, for example, out in Beaverton, one of the best programs in the country. It’s called One Pill Can Kill. And it was started by a family who lost their son when he came home from college for the first time and tried something he thought was an opioid. He was [just] gonna try and it turned out to not be what he thought it was and he died. So these are the kinds of things that I’m looking into as much or more than interdiction, which is a huge, huge problem. But, you know, we all need to work on this together.
Miller: If I could just interject here, it seems like, and I understand when you’re describing, the international scope of this and the levers that you have in Oregon, but it also seems like an acknowledgment of, on some level, our collective powerlessness at the state level - if you’re saying that there’s a limit to how much we can do to prevent these pills from coming into our state.
So instead, one of our big focuses is…in addition to obviously, massive busts here and there but massive busts which don’t seem like they change the overall enormous scale of the pills that aren’t being busted. So what we’re left with is better education campaigns to make it, I guess, less likely that people will try these drugs. It’s a terrible acknowledgement of just how much power we have.
Rosenblum: Well, prevention and education and awareness are certainly critical. But I think we also have to face up to the fact that it is on our streets. It is everywhere. It is in our clubs. It is in our prisons. And we need to focus on what is commonly referred to as harm reduction. I think of it more in terms of saving lives of people who are using and who are addicted frankly, and who are finding it extremely difficult when they are trying to get off of it. It is very, very difficult and this is what we learned about among many other topics. We had 18 speakers that were convening. But we learned about how difficult it is to withdraw from this addiction to fentanyl and, of course, methamphetamine. We’ve known that for a long time.
So what I’m focused on a lot and what the legislature was focused on, in the recent legislation championed by one of our speakers, Dr. Maxine Dexter, is harm reduction. The dispensing and the delivery of Narcan (naloxone) to places in our community where, traditionally, [you] wouldn’t have thought you would be able to reverse an opioid overdose: in a restaurant or in a bar or in a bathroom. And we had a speaker who, literally, that’s her job. It’s called Project Red, through the Alano Club. And her job is to go out and train bartenders and restaurant folks who want to be able to save lives when someone who’s in their presence is overdosing. That turns out to be way more common than any of us would even want to fathom.
Miller: Naloxone, it seems to me, [has wide] availability [and] is not a particularly contentious political issue right now. I see pretty widespread support for the availability of naloxone or Narcan. The efforts to overhaul Measure 110 by recriminalizing the possession of small amounts of drugs like fentanyl or meth is more contentious. Maybe I’ve missed this but are you currently on the record as being in opposition to those efforts or in support of them?
Rosenblum: I’m not on the record in support of or against them for one thing. If it does become a ballot measure, which it very likely could, I don’t take positions on ballot measures because I actually draft the ballot titles for them. And I want to make sure that I do it in a neutral and fair-minded fashion. That said, it could also become legislation that could change the landscape on the Measure 110 issues. So I would have to say this about that: We need the funding that comes from Measure 110 to ensure that we have SUD [Substance Use Disorder] treatment. We need more of it. We need a greater workforce to provide it. And I’m very concerned that were we to lose that funding, we would be taking a step backwards and not a step forward.
So I think you need to look at Measure 110 in that context. Because what it was really all about was funding, taking funds that are used to incarcerate people and pay for them to be in jail, not receiving treatment, not really benefiting in terms of their addiction and then being put back on the streets versus having funds for treatment programs and providers. Now, there are other sources of funding. And one would be, for example, the settlements that my office has received from the drug opioid manufacturers and distributors and dispensers. We’ve been very successful in the last year.
So I’m hopeful that those monies will be, in fact, they are already being allocated. And one place where they’ve been allocated is Save Lives Oregon, which is all about distributing naloxone into our communities. So that is happening. And I’m really proud that we’re able to provide those funds. But getting back to your question, it really is about making sure that we have the continuity of these resources so that we cannot just have one year’s worth of treatment programs, but that we can have long term successes in our communities. And without those funds, we’re going to be back to ground zero.
Miller: You’re going to be Oregon’s Attorney General for a little more than a year now. You’ve announced you’re not running for re-election. If you could accomplish just one thing, with respect to fentanyl, in the time you have left in office, what would it be?
Rosenblum: Well, I think I always look to the most vulnerable in our communities and how I can help them. So I would say that I would look to youth because I think our youth are pretty naive about this. I’d like to start out by saving the lives of our young people.
You tell you hear one story and then you hear another and you can’t even believe that that’s what’s happening. So that would be number one.
And right up there would be addressing the problems in our jails and prisons.
Because it’s just not right to be incarcerating people and then letting them out on the streets without the tools to survive. And what we’ve seen is that the greatest number of overdoses and deaths are occurring [among] people who are being released from jail and prison without any treatment being even offered to them. And if it is, with long delays before they can actually get into any kind of program, it’s too late at that point.
Miller: Ellen Rosenblum, thanks very much for your time today. I appreciate it.
Rosenblum: Absolutely. A pleasure to be with you. Thank you, Dave. Thanks for your interest.
Miller: Ellen Rosenblum is Oregon’s Attorney General.
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