A local judge is working to help residents overcome the growing drug problem in Marshall County.
Jamie Jameson, 42nd Circuit Court judge, presented information on Thursday to Marshall County Board of Education at its regularly-scheduled meeting on the rising death rate related to opioid drug abuse in Kentucky. Jameson joins others in the county who hope to open doors on “The Hope Center,” a proposed in-house, faith-based drug treatment facility. Among those present lending support were local law enforcement, county representatives and recovering addicts who have graduated from various programs such as Riverwoods.
Advocates hope to persuade school board members to consider the possibility of donating the former South Marshall Middle School on Sid Darnall Road to be used as a treatment facility. The board of education intended to repurpose the building in some way, though board members had no specific plans. Marshall County Schools Superintendent Trent Lovett said Jameson contacted him inquiring about the district’s intent for the building and what the process would be to acquire the facility.
“I just told him I’d talk to the board about it, and they said to come and do a presentation,” Lovett said. “No. 1, we wanted to hear what they had to say and see what the program was all about. No 2., to get a sense of what the community felt about it.”
That intent is still uncertain. Lovett said the board was limited legally in what it could do. Should a nonprofit agency seek to acquire the building, it would have to do so through public auction. The board could possibly donate the facility to a government agency, though Lovett said board attorney Marty Johnson would have to look into details.
“There’s some legal issues that Mr. Johnson and, I guess, Mr. Jameson or … maybe Jeff Edwards from the county attorney’s office, that they will have to discuss before we can even make a decision on how or what steps we would have to follow,” Lovett said. ” … And we don’t make the decisions on who’s going to govern this facility, they do. So, if they choose for it to be a 501 (c) 3 that’s going to run it, which is a nonprofit organization, then we can’t donate it to them.”
Jameson said while he wasn’t soliciting property, a treatment facility was a need he hoped the board would consider when determining what it would do with the building.
“Kentucky is at the forefront of the opioid epidemic,” Jameson said. “… From 2012-2015, 4,417 people died in Kentucky from overdose alone. That’s just overdose deaths. You add to that vehicular homicides that occur because of impairment, you add to that the other deaths that occur – children that are harmed, killed, etc. because their parents are impaired – all that is going to grow exponentially.”
Those numbers were specifically related to opioid overdose deaths, which include prescription pain killers, heroin and methadone. Statistics did not account for methamphetamines, another highly abused substance in the state and region, Jameson said, or synthetic opioids like Fentanyl and U4. Further, those numbers did not account for health complications as a result of drug abuse that eventually led to death.
According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Kentucky in 2015 had the third highest drug overdose rate in the U.S., behind West Virginia and New Hampshire. Deaths due to drug overdose increased more than 21 percent from 2014 to 2015, according to the CDC.
“We’ve got people dying, in such a small community it seems, left and right,” Jameson said. “From 2012 to 2015, according to the Justice Department … 33 people have died in Marshall County alone, just from drug overdose. Now that’s not counting, again, all those other things I listed before. That’s just from overdose. So that’s, they used drugs and essentially died instantaneously from the overdose of the drugs. Thirty-one of those people actually were Marshall County residents.
“We handle about 750 cases a year in the 42nd Circuit,” he added. “There’s a lot that goes on that never makes the TV, but let me tell you, 96 percent of those cases are the result of drug addiction.”
Jameson said cases range from possession to theft and trafficking. Most of those cases originate in the south end of the county, particularly near Hardin. Similarly, most cases in family court related to child neglect and abuse stem from drug abuse as well, he said.
Not only is it proving a strain on the judicial system, it’s draining the workforce. Jameson said some larger employers have begun offering treatment options to employees to encourage them to seek help in hopes of retaining workers. The epidemic is costing employers an estimated $10 billion a year in loss of productivity and absenteeism, Jameson said.
In addition, residents suffering from drug addiction arrested have led to significant jail population increases. Jameson estimated Marshall County taxpayers funded the local detention center to the tune of about $730,000 per year at the current rate of $25 per inmate per day.
If even 20 percent of those county inmates were in the Hope Center receiving treatment, the county would save a minimum of $146,000 a year just in housing costs,” Jameson said. “… Our jail houses an average of 225 to 240 inmates in the facility with only the capacity for 200. This is done with a staff of three to four people at time. So you’ve got three or four deputies over 225-240 people. This month, our jail set a record by housing 172 inmates in the county inmate portion of the jail, which only has a capacity for 112.”
Jameson said a treatment facility would alleviate most of those overcrowding issues and put the community on track to make an impact on those numbers.
Marshall County Sheriff Kevin Byars also came to lend his support to the cause and agreed that drug crimes were depleting resources from communities, and destroying lives. He said the old-school mentality of throwing addicts in jail had not solved the problem. However, he said funding would prove the biggest obstacle in establishing a treatment center. Still, he said something needed to be done.
“Several years ago, they did a drug … study in the state of Kentucky, and this is exactly what they came up with, that’s what is needed is treatment,” Byars said. “… Chemical dependency is easy to get rid of; 30-45 days you get the poison out of the body, it’s going to return to normal function. There’s a lot of psychological damage that goes along with drug addiction. Basically, the synaptic sites in your brain is basically rewired, and it’s going to take a longer to fix that. That’s what’s needed to fix what we’ve got going on today with our drug use. … Treatment centers, I think, is a need, but again, you’ve got two problems: they need to be long term, and where’s the funding going to come from? That’s the two big hurdles you’ve got to come over.”
Benton Police Chief Tracy Watwood said it was a service he felt the community needed to combat the type of drugs finding ways into residents’ hands. For law enforcement, it’s a very different world than it was when he started.
“Twenty years ago, if we found marijuana that was a bad drug,” Watwood said. “Today, marijuana is like finding cigarettes on a kid 20 years ago. And the drugs that you’re mentioning in this presentation, now it doesn’t just affect the poor. It has no boundaries. We’ve dealt with … wealthy people, we’ve dealt with people that have your regularly 40-hour work week jobs. … I have family members that would fall into these categories. So, I could tell you from a law enforcement standpoint and from a personal standpoint, the need in something like this. I think as law enforcement we do a pretty good job in trying to arrest the traffickers, but what falls through the cracks are these users. And it’s a disease. You know, you’ve got to look at it as people that need help, and as a community I think we need to come together any way we can and help people.”
It’s not a cut and dry solution. The district would need to weigh its options and get feedback from parents; the property adjoins that of South Marshall Elementary School, a source of concern for board members, Lovett said. Certain infrastructure separation would need to take place, such as splitting off the septic system, Jameson said, in addition to renovating the building. The former middle school, he said in an interview following the meeting, would work well for a proposed facility in that the building itself had many of the necessary elements in place: gymnasium for exercise, cafeteria and classrooms that could be utilized as such or converted into sleeping units.
However, student safety was the bigger concern on several board members’ minds.
“How do we protect our children there at South Elementary?” Board Chairman Randy Travis asked presenters. “Is there a threat by having this there? … I think it’s a great program, I’m just concerned that that facility joins the elementary school. That’s the only concern I think all of us have, is how are we going to keep the elementary (kids safe).”
Jameson said the program would be selective about its participants. No one with violent and/or sex offenses would be accepted. Those convicted of trafficking would also be unable to participate. Jameson said in a three-phase program, the first phase is like lock down. Patients are not allowed to leave, have cellphones or have visitors for about three months. Jameson also said at the ground level, before the program was actually a program, organizers would have flexibility to implement additional provisions at the request of the school district to ensure additional safety measures, such as constructing a large privacy fence to block the view between the school and the facility.
“It can be modified,” he said. “That’s one of the good things about this. If this happens, it’s ours to do with as we feel. There’s no restrictions on how we design the program. What I’m describing to you is how the other couple dozen facilities across the state are run.”
While program specifics and funding avenues had not been determined as of Thursday, Jameson proposed a likely gender-specific facility housing a multi-level program, designed to address immediate detox and several months of subsequent therapy and teaching patients how to deal with the pressures of everyday life without resorting to old habits. The program would also devote significant time to after care, to help clients succeed in staying off drugs once in-house treatment is complete. Jameson said after care was a critical component to treatment.
“Relapse generally occurs when they get back out into the community,” he said. “Matter of fact one of those pictures I showed you, I know that person got back from treatment and thought that he was cured. He said, ‘Man I haven’t been sober this long in my whole life; I’m good, I’m good.’ I tried to tell him, I said, ‘You’re going to have to try, you’re going to have to learn to live sober in your old life.’ Not six months later he was dead.”
Travis said he felt some better in learning more about the proposed program, but board members still needed time to consider the options, find out the legalities of the situation and get feedback from parents on the proposal.
“As far as where we are, we were trying to get convinced as to why we would want it out there,” Travis said. “… We wanted them to prove to us why it needed to be there, and I don’t know what we’re going to do. Because I just heard tonight for the first time about the legal issue.”
Lovett said the district needed to do something with the building, which was erected in 1957, regardless.
“We need to get it off our books,” Lovett said. “We’re still heating and cooling the building, and there’s still water in the building. We kept it for a year to see if we would use it for something else, and I think we’re to the point now where we’re probably not going to do that, so we’re going to look at possibilities for that building.”
Lovett said the matter would come up for discussion again, though it was unlikely to be on the agenda next month.
Jameson said the group would continue to look for locations in the county should the board elect not to contribute the facility. Should it obtain the building, he estimated the facility could be operational in about two years.
The board of education is seeking feedback from parents on housing a drug treatment facility in the former South Marshall Middle School. Parents and residents were urged to email concerns, feedback or questions to District 5 School Board Representative Tiffany Carlson at tiffany.carlson@marshall.kyschools.us or to Lovett at trent.lovett@marshall.kyschools.us. Residents may also contact the board office at 270-527-8628.