AG Zoeller, Rx Task Force host two-day conference to focus on reducing
opioid abuse, providing treatment in Indiana communities

INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. – Indiana Attorney General Greg Zoeller, creator and co-chair of the Indiana Prescription Drug Abuse Prevention Task Force, hosts the 7th annual Indiana Prescription Drug Abuse & Heroin Symposium beginning today at the Indiana Convention Center in downtown Indianapolis. The symposium, which will take place today and tomorrow, will focus on new challenges in the fight against opioid prescription drug and heroin abuse.

More than 900 people will attend this year’s symposium, titled “Rebuilding the Hoosier Heartland”. The two-day symposium will offer sessions on arming communities with strategies for curtailing abuse and providing treatment.

“This is our 7th annual event and today there is a much greater understanding of the consequences of abuse and addiction from opioids and prescription drugs,” Zoeller said. “Our Task Force and its partners continue to address the crisis from the ongoing opioid epidemic. It is up to all of us to remain engaged and seek solutions to this public health crisis that is devastating lives across Indiana.”

The symposium will for the first time focus on heroin abuse and how to reduce its supply, building on the efforts of the task force during this past year. High-risk individuals are more vulnerable than ever to increasing numbers of overdoses on a new form of heroin laced with fentanyl. The synthetic drug has increased heroin’s potency by 30- to 50 times.

Zoeller created the Prescription Drug Abuse Prevention Task Force in 2012 to reduce the abuse of controlled prescription drugs and decrease the number of deaths associated with these drugs in Indiana.

In 2016, the task force placed heroin abuse in its cross-hairs due to the overwhelming cry from communities across Indiana who needed their first responders to be equipped and trained with Naloxone, the fast-acting antidote for people who have overdosed on prescription opioids or heroin.

So far this year, Zoeller has provided $800,000 to Overdose Lifeline, Inc., the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department, and the Indiana State Police for the purchase and distribution of Naloxone kits. These agencies combined have saved at least 1,500 lives across the state.

Congresswoman Susan Brooks is on the front lines of addressing these issues in Congress. She is an author of the “Heroin and Prescription Opioid Abuse Prevention, Education, and Enforcement Act of 2015,” which targets several areas of need critical to reducing the number of painkiller and heroin overdose deaths each year. The legislation will provide new guidance and best practices to members of the medical community, reauthorize prescription drug monitoring programs (PDMP) critical to local law enforcement efforts, increase access to life-saving Naloxone and raise public, provider, and patient awareness of opioid drugs.

“The over prescription of opioids is a contributing factor to the heroin and opioid abuse crisis that is devastating Hoosier families and communities,” Brooks said. “This year in Congress, we were able to get legislation signed into law to address some aspects of this crisis, but there is still much more work to be done. This symposium is an opportunity to share successes and to confront the continuing challenges that are facing our state as a result of heroin and opioid abuse.”

Deaths caused by heroin overdoses have nearly doubled in recent years.

“While the task force has made progress in reducing the number of pills prescribed we now turn our attention to address the need for addiction treatment by those who often to turn to heroin,” Zoeller added.

The Task Force combines legislators, state and federal regulators, clinicians, pharmacists, treatment providers, educators and law enforcement, and holds quarterly meetings in addition to meetings held by the following individual committees: Education, Enforcement, INSPECT (state prescription drug monitoring program), Treatment & Recovery and Drug Take Back.

The Indiana Prescription Drug Abuse Symposium is the largest statewide collaboration of professionals from local, state and federal agencies, academia, clinicians, pharmacists, treatment providers, counselors, educators, state and national leaders, and advocates impacted by prescription drug abuse. The two-day event features several educational sessions centered on prevention, treatment and recovery.

Sessions include:

Oct. 13

• 8:45 am – The Story of the Opiate Epidemic and How We Got Here
• 10 a.m. – Addressing Addiction Behind the Walls
• 10 a.m. – Pharmacists and Student Pharmacists’ Involvement in Drug Abuse Issues
• 10 a.m. – Benzodiazepines: Use Navigating Crucial Conversations
• 10 a.m. – Why Are So Few Physicians Treating Addiction? What Can We Do About It?
  
  
• 11:15 a.m. – Opioids: What Our Country Needs To Know and Prepare – Healing w/Hope
• 11:15 a.m. – Project Point: A New Approach to Improving Care for Patients of Opiate Overdose
• 11:15 a.m. – MAT – Successful Collaborations with Courts & Law Enforcement
• 11:15 a.m. – Treatment, Recovery and Reproductive Health Services. Doesn’t It Make Sense?
  
  
• 1:15 p.m. – Drug Abuse at the Crossroads Between the Living and the Dead
• 1:15 p.m. – The Role of Physical Therapy in the Management of Chronic Pain
• 1:15 p.m. – Coaching For Success: Integration of the Recovery Model and MAT
• 1:15 p.m. – Community Continuum of Supports: A Framework for Community Empowerment
  
  
• 2:30 p.m. – Harm Reduction Works
• 2:30 p.m. – How to 10-90 Life Using REBT Skills in a Recovery Lifestyle
• 2:30 p.m. – How Pharmacists and Pharmacy Technicians Can Curb Indiana’s Meth Lab Crisis
• 2:30 p.m. – Born Dependent – Neonatal Abstinence Syndrome: Helping Mom & Babies
  
  
• 3:45 p.m. – International Efforts to Reduce Heroin Supply

 Oct. 14

• 8:45 am – Opioids and Pregnancy – Life Course Perspectives
  
  
• 10 a.m. – Don’t Be a Weak Link: Developing a Multidisciplinary Public Safety Naloxone Program
• 10 a.m. – Recovery Works & the Gold Card Program
• 10 a.m. – Teen Substance Abuse: America’s #1 Public Health Problem
• 10 a.m. – Managing Acute Pain Patients Suffering from Heroin Addiction: 4 Patient Cases
  
  
• 11:15 a.m. – Drug Store Cowboys: Pharmacy Robbery and Burglary for Controlled Substance
• 11:15 a.m. – Identifying and Implementing Effective Prevention Strategies to Combat the Opioid Epidemic-Practical Application in Your Community
• 11:15 a.m. – Drug Monitoring Program Data
• 11:15 a.m. – Adolescent Substance Abuse Disorder Treatment: What’s the Latest?
  
  
• 1:15 p.m. – Building Local Capacity to Prevent Prescription & Opiate Drug Abuse Before it Happens
  
  
• 2:30 p.m. – Bad medicine
• 2:30 p.m. – Community Collaboration and MAT: How Our Community Addressed the Substance Abuse Crisis
• 2:30 p.m. – How Do We Keep Track of Professionals With Substance Use Disorder?
• 2:30 p.m. – It Takes a Village: Preventing Substance Abuse Among Youth
  
  
• 3:45 p.m. – Strategies for Success – State’s Attorney General Panel

New this year, the Office of the Indiana Attorney General will feature a “Recovery is Beautiful” and “Memory” Wall at the symposium. The wall will feature loved ones in recovery and lives lost to opioid addiction. The displays will be located at the BitterPill.in.gov booth. Submissions, which included a photo with a brief story, came in from across Indiana.

Special guests at the symposium include Congresswoman Susan Brooks, Attorney General of the State of Puebla, Mexico, Victor Carrancá Bourget, and this year’s keynote speaker, Sam Quinones, author of the book, Dreamland. Sam Quinones is a journalist, storyteller, former LA Times reporter and author of three acclaimed books of narrative nonfiction.

Visit www.BitterPill.IN.gov for more information about the Attorney General’s Prescription Drug Abuse Prevention Task Force, naloxone expansion efforts and other responses to the state’s opioid overdose crisis.