‘Like we were hit by a tsunami’: Trumbull County official testifies in opioid trial how scourge struck her community

A Walgreens sign outside a store

WalgreensAP Photo/Nam Y. Huh, File

CLEVELAND, Ohio – Trumbull County’s top drug prevention official took the stand Tuesday in the nation’s first trial focused on pharmacies’ role in the opioid crisis and said the scourge that has devastated her community could get worse this year.

“We’ve been watching it mount, watching it grow,” said April Caraway, the executive director of the county’s Mental Health and Recovery Board. “[The year] 2017 was our worst year, but this year could be worse.”

Caraway’s testimony came in the third week of the trial in U.S. District Court in Cleveland before Senior Judge Dan Polster and a jury. Attorneys for Trumbull and Lake counties sued CVS, Walmart, Giant Eagle and Walgreens, seeking to hold the chains responsible for the opioid crisis.

A fifth chain, Rite Aid, settled with the counties before the trial. The agreement has not been made public.

The trial involves the pharmacies’ distributing and dispensing practices. Attorneys for the counties have stressed that the pharmacies are the last line of defense in preventing addiction and overdoses, and they failed in their role.

The pharmacies have denied the allegations. Attorneys for the chains have insisted that the pharmacists have questioned prescriptions and notified authorities of rogue doctors. They said the companies also worked to track irregular orders or those that spiked from normal patterns during the distribution process.

Caraway underscored the impact of the painkiller epidemic in Northeast Ohio. She said 135 people died in 2017 in Trumbull County and 1,250 suffered overdoses from all types of opioids. She said that she fears that this year will top that number, based on statistics. The county has been hit hard in recent years by high unemployment, and it suffered a major loss in 2019 when the GM plant in Lordstown closed.

Deaths from opioid overdoses have climbed for years. In 2014, for instance, the county had 54.

“We’re so inundated in our county with deaths,” Caraway said, referring to the past several years. “It was like we were hit by a tsunami, and we were pulling bodies out of the water.”

Caraway said the impact has been felt throughout Trumbull County. She said that the county has seen a 40% jump in the number of children that have been placed in foster care.

She also said the opioid crisis has been “devastating to our workforce,” as employers could not find residents who could pass drug screens.

Caraway testified that the county has its own opiate death review committee, which reviews autopsies and coroner’s reports to determine what can be “done to prevent this.”

She said her agency posted several videos on YouTube about addiction, seeking to reach young people. It has also worked with other groups to place door hangers at homes across the county, using an image of a toe tag from a coroner’s office to grab residents’ attention.

Caraway testified that her agency fought to increase capacity for treatment beds and the need to link hospitals with outpatient services. It also led a push to reduce the number of prescriptions doctors write for patients.

Her testimony followed that of Katherine Keyes, an associate professor of epidemiology at Columbia University, who also testified for the counties.

Keyes estimated the number of residents in Trumbull County who use opioids chronically is about 6,000, while the number in Lake County is about 7,500. Trumbull’s population is slightly under 200,000, while about 230,000 live in Lake.

The most comprehensive government database captures the years 2006 to 2012. In those years, more than 80 million opioid pills reached Trumbull County from 2006 to 2012, and more than 60 million hit Lake County, according to the data.

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