New senior living development set to open in Lancaster next year

New resources and cooperation will help fight addiction

Jeff Fix
Special to the Eagle-Gazette

Like many I know, fall is my favorite season of the year.  Recently while enjoying a fall afternoon, I saw a mass of clouds moving off over the horizon and, despite the pleasant scene, a less-than-pleasant thought crossed my mind: this is how many people view the drug addiction problem—far away, affecting others, not their problem.

For too many families the impact isn’t far away, its personal and constant. Moreover, even for those who don’t realize it, they are, in fact, impacted by addiction. They have friends who are silently suffering, and they live in communities that are bearing greater law enforcement, treatment, and health care costs. Addiction touches us all, directly and indirectly.  Each of us bear the costs personally, financially, or both.

Personally, too many of my friends and neighbors have seen their lives turned upside down by it. Fifteen years ago, while coaching my 12-year-old daughter’s softball team, two different parents on the team reached out to me in the same month with concerns about the “heroin problem” they learned was developing in our hometown of Pickerington. I was a city council member at the time and in talking with our chief of police and, eventually, the State of Ohio’s cabinet director for addiction services and personal friend, Orman Hall, I learned that heroin use was rampant in our community and across the country because it was so cheap and accessible.  This was long before the term “opiate epidemic” was a part of our common American vernacular.

The size and severity of the problem shocked me because, at the time, I thought heroin was something used only by “junkies,” affecting other people far away. The truth was dramatically different, and it drove me to act by bringing together a concerned local stakeholders group of elected officials, school administrators, the health care industry, service providers, etc. We met regularly to raise awareness and to figure out what we could do locally to address the now burgeoning “epidemic.”  Over the course of my years on Council, and now as a member of the Fairfield County Commission, two friends lost their children to heroin overdoses, then another friend, then a woman with whom I work, then a friends’ grandson was in and out of rehab a dozen times… The stories go on.  The emotional and financial costs to these families are nearly unbearable.

The reasons for the epidemic are many and they include the actions of the pharmaceutical industry. Drug companies and wholesalers’ responsibility was acknowledged in the recent financial settlement that will bring approximately $800 million to Ohio. The OneOhio Recovery Foundation, a new private, non-profit foundation, will help manage and distribute just over half of these funds to local organizations involved in drug addiction relief, recovery and prevention. I was honored to be elected to the Foundation’s board of directors.

Under the direction of the 29-member board—19 of whom, like me, have been chosen from local regions across the state—Ohio’s settlement funds will be invested to serve Ohioans in the future, as well as distributed in the near-term in coordination with and input from the regional groups. That the Foundation is a private sector entity and not a government agency shields Ohio’s opiate settlement funds from Statehouse politics and prevents politicians from spending it on other, unrelated purposes. Despite the Foundation’s private sector status, however, our public mission mandates transparency in its operations, meetings, and use of funds.  I and others are committed to ensuring this happens.

Ohio’s efforts to prevent and respond to drug addiction range from homegrown, small-group efforts like the one I started in Pickerington, to those of a statewide cabinet agency with millions of state and federal funds. Funding alone cannot solve this problem, but it can help, and with the OneOhio Recovery Foundation our state now has a permanent resource dedicated to the mission. What’s most important, however, is the spirit of cooperation captured in the Foundation’s name: “OneOhio.” Only by coming together, helping those with addiction recover, supporting their families, and helping prevent addiction to begin with will we make real progress.

It does impact you, so join the fight.

Jeff Fix represents Region 18 (Licking, Fairfield, Knox, Delaware, Morrow, Marion and Union Counties) on the OneOhio Recovery Foundation Board of Directors. Jeff works for RDP Foodservice as the Director of Multi-Unit Business Development and is a member of the Board of Directors of the Ohio Restaurant Association, and the County Commissioners Association of Ohio.  A resident of Pickerington for more than 25 years, Jeff began his public service on city council and has served as a Fairfield County commissioner since 2018.