Why raise money for an incinerator?

A foundational model that you learn when you begin working in the Prevention field is the Strategic Prevention Framework (SPF). It is simultaneously simple and complicated--PhDs have published explanations, and I have to admit that it took more than one training for me to think "I get it."

In its simplest form, this model translates like this:

1. Before you decide to go do anything in a community, you first find ways to gauge the needs there. 
2. After you know the true needs (usually backed up with statistics), you have to build Capacity. Capacity is both who you can get involved in the effort and resources you need to achieve your goals.
3. Once you have inventoried both people and materials, you can develop specific plans for the action you are going to take.
4. Implementation is simply applying the plan to real life.
5. Evaluation includes judging how successful the action was at addressing the community's needs, and improvements.

Spelled out like that, it sort of seems like common sense, doesn't it? You progress through the "Spiff Flower" over and over, never stopping. You are never finished, and always somewhere in the process.

Now that I have learned it and operated from it for nearly a year, I can't unlearn it. Try as I might, I can't get it out of my head. Seriously, it is like something out of Poe.

The first part, Assessment, is the answer to the question in the title of this post. Why raise money for an incinerator? Well, our community needs one. Right here in Tyler, we have a problem with prescription drug abuse, and no one is coming to town to do anything about it. It's up to us. Knowing this is true, based on actual needs in my community, I can't get past how serious a threat unused prescription drugs can be, and I can't walk away and not try to offer a solution.

I want everyone in East Texas to know that prescription drug abuse and misuse is deadly--it is no safer than street drugs. I want every person to know that someone--police or the sheriff's office--will take up turned-in drugs at least a couple of well-publicized times each year and destroy them, free of charge. I want it to be as common and easy to get rid of old drugs as it is, today, to recycle cardboard and plastic.

I don't want to read another story of a person whose life has been shortened because of an accident with leftover pills, or from taking someone else's medications, especially not children. Listen, I have taken someone else's painkillers and been thankful for them, but it can so easily go the other way. I didn't know how commonly it goes bad, or I would have called my own doctor and gone to the trouble of getting my own, correct, prescription.

To my friends who counter that "we" don't have a problem--some "they" does--I say that some of us don't really understand what "WE" means. Also, I hope and pray that someone they love isn't victimized by prescription drug abuse; Be it a child accidentally ingesting pills, an accidental overdose, a pain-killer robbery, or some other drug-related crime, we are susceptible unless we find a way to address the problem.

If you would like to make a tax-deductible contribution to the Tyler Incinerator Project, please follow this link: http://www.gofundme.com/tylerincinerator

The Drugs in Our Cabinets

Jacob Hamilton Garrett had been missing for a month when his body was found last March slumped against a tree in a wooded area behind an auto shop, where an employee was installing a fence.

Jacob was 14 years old. A 7th grader at Whitehouse Junior High.

“Jacob was a teenager who was trying to experiment with pills,” said his sister, Robin Hukill Potter, in a Facebook post. “Jacob took a couple meds that you cannot mix. He didn’t know that you couldn’t mix those meds.”

Teenagers are killing themselves with the medicine we leave in our cabinets.

“Deaths from drug overdose have been rising steadily over the past two decades and have become the leading cause of injury death in the United States,” according to the Center for Disease Control website. “Every day in the United States, 114 people die as a result of drug overdose, and another 6,748 are treated in emergency departments for the misuse or abuse of drugs. Nearly 9 out of 10 poisoning deaths are caused by drugs.”

"It's a very serious issue, it is on the rise," said David Davis, Pharmacist, at Good's Medicine Chest in Tyler in a KETK article. "Your teens believe that prescription drug abuse is safer than abusing illegal or street drugs, which is wrong, they're both dangerous drugs … Teens feel like it's not illegal to abuse prescription drugs, when in fact it is illegal to abuse a prescription drug or take a prescription drug that's intended for someone else."

So one of the goals of the East Texas Substance Abuse coalition is to raise money to purchase an incinerator for the Smith County Sheriff's Department, so area residents can safely dispose of their unused prescription drugs (flushing your pills down the toilet contaminates the water supply). Click here to learn more and to donate.

Making an immediate difference in Tyler, TX

tl;dr. Here is the shortest version: I'm asking for tax-deductible donations to buy an incinerator for local law enforcement so we can keep doing prescription-drug-take-back events in Tyler. GoFundMe HERE.

To me, one of the craziest things about ending up working in youth drug prevention is the scope of the work I get to try to do. You have to take a huge, big-picture view of things, or else you will feel discouraged and give up. I mean, the whole "War on Drugs" was declared by President Nixon in 1971, a full year before I was born, and here we are 43 years later still trying to impact things in some meaningful way.

The thing is, if I didn't believe that there are things we can to to make Tyler a better place to live, I would work in some other field. But there are things we can do, right now, that can potentially protect kids and make Tyler safer, drug-wise.

Prescription Drug Abuse is a Growing Problem

The CDC has declared Prescription Drug Abuse an epidemic, especially thanks to increases in prescribing opioidpain relievers – drugs like oxycodone, hydrocodone, methadone and fentanyl – which are driving the dramatic increase in overdose deaths over the last decade.  Opioid pain reliever overdose deaths have quadrupled since 1999. Inadvertent overdose has by surpassed automobile accidents to become the leading cause of injury death in the country. Often, people become hooked on Prescription pain relievers only to move to street Heroin once their prescriptions are finally nixed. This is a real problem, partly caused by the systems we have in place; I have heard of local doctors bypassing new prescription rules, which were put in place to attempt to curb abuse, by prescribing Tylenol with codeine instead of pure opiods. Medical professionals bypassing rules is one reason so many opioids are on the streets in the first place.

Prescription Drugs in the Home

How can having extra Prescription drugs lying about be a problem? Directly, children and thieves have easier access to drugs that are not actively being taken. Poison Control lists 286 calls regarding overdoses of cold medicines, and 464 regarding painkillers between 2009 and 2012, and I personally know of two cases where elderly people's medicine cabinets have been robbed of old painkillers. What's worse, I have known three individuals who have passed away from accidental overdoses of painkillers; these were intelligent, capable people, and in two cases the pills were prescribed to the users, but that's how dangerous opioids can be.

DEA Prescription Drug Take-back Events

Since 2010, the Drug Enforcement Agency has sponsored biannual Prescription Drug Take-back events in communities all over the US. Originally, DEA Agents would be present with local law enforcement in the Spring and Fall and collect voluntary citizen donations. They would then send the drugs to incinerators (Tyler drugs went to Dallas) and dispose of them. This was a costly effort, taking both time and money, but it was thought to have made a difference, and served to educate citizens as well as to remove substances from the streets. After holding events twice each year for four years, the DEA held their final event this past September 27th, citing budgetary reasons. Their hope is, now, that local law enforcement will take over serving communities with events.

I get the need. So, what can I do?

Local law enforcement wants to keep taking in prescription drugs, but this kind of purchase simply isn't in their budgets, and paying for outside incineration is ultimately cost-prohibitive. The East Texas Substance Abuse Coalition  is hoping that the Greater Tyler, Texas community will respond to this need by joining together to purchase a Drug Terminator, a portable, small-batch drug incinerator, for local law enforcement. 

Police incineration is the safest, most effective way for leftover drugs to be disposed of (flushing pills down the toilet further endangers the community by mucking up the water supply). I will launch a GoFundMe campaign and ask that Tylerites join with me in raising money to get this tool for law enforcement--if we can make this purchase happen, we can keep having these events, well into the future. Any tax-deductible gift you can spare will continue to help this community, year after year. If you can help in this effort, visit our GoFundMe Campaign page, and share it, if you will.

And if this fundraising works in Tyler, I will go into Henderson and Jacksonville, Athens, and Canton and see if their law enforcement is as keen to keep things going as Tyler's is, and we will do it all again, there.

Thank you!