BEVERLY – “It kind of hits everybody,” said Beverly Sgt. David Costa, describing the opioid epidemic that experts say has only worsened during the coronavirus pandemic. It’s a crisis that impacts people from all backgrounds, including the Jewish community.
During the pandemic, the city of Beverly has seen a rise in overdoses after a decline in the last five years. In 2019, the department reported 62 overdoses, and in 2020, that number rose to 73 – nearly an 18 percent increase.
The opioid epidemic has worsened during the pandemic, those close to the issue say. A wide range of reasons include a lack of in-person communication, and fewer connections to support systems of counseling and treatment. It has also left people feeling isolated. Amid all this, those using drugs face overdosing from a powerful illegal synthetic opioid, fentanyl.
To fight the opioid epidemic, the Beverly Police Department was among 11 departments, including Methuen, Lynn and Ipswich on the North Shore, that piloted an initiative during the coronavirus pandemic called One2One Engagement to Recovery. The program provides drug users access to fentanyl test strips to avoid a fatal overdose, along with other resources and referrals to treatment and information about resources for both those using drugs and their families.
It’s an initiative of the nonprofit Police Assisted Addiction and Recovery Initiative and its research partner, Brandeis University.
“Whether they recognize it or not, families are being impacted. There is no way the Jewish community isn’t being impacted just like my family,” said John Rosenthal of Gloucester, the co-founder and board chairman of P.A.A.R.I., which works with law enforcement across the country to find non-arrest pathways to treatment and recovery.
Rosenthal, who works in real estate development, said his own family has been impacted by the opioid epidemic.
In June 2015, he formed P.A.A.R.I. alongside the Gloucester Police Department’s Angel Initiative started by former Chief Leonard Campanello. The Angel program allowed drug users to go to the police department, turn in their drugs, and get immediate access to treatment and the overdose antidote, Narcan.
At this time, Rosenthal did not realize his brother’s oldest son, Nathan Huggins-Rosenthal, was struggling with addiction.
He had attended Suffolk University, and became a well-compensated stock analyst, but he was plagued with a bad back and went from prescription painkillers to fentanyl. His nephew was 34 when he died in 2016. He “died alone seven months after we started P.A.A.R.I.” Rosenthal said.
Rosenthal, who grew up with a Reform Jewish background, said he now considers his religion to be nature and Buddhism.
“But, my activism comes largely as a result of my Judaism,” Rosenthal said. In his senior year of high school in Cambridge, a teacher showed his class black and white films shot in the Nazi-run death camps, something he called “a defining moment of my life.”
He realized that if he had grown up at a different time, that he might have met a similar fate.
“I have no tolerance for injustice,” Rosenthal said, who has been an outspoken advocate for causes such as the environment, and gun violence prevention as the cofounder of Stop Handgun Violence.
Last month, Brandeis University received a $150,000 federal grant to work with P.A.A.R.I. on further expanding the One2One initiative to departments in Massachusetts and Maine. The nonprofit initially received a $150,000 grant for the pilot from the Massachusetts Department of Health for this program, said Allie Hunter, the nonprofit organization’s executive director.
This new grant was awarded by the Washington/Baltimore High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area program, the University of Baltimore and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Combating Opioid Overdose through Community-level Intervention grant program, with funding coming from the Office of National Drug Control Policy. P.A.A.R.I. is partnering with Brandeis and researchers at the university’s Heller School of Public Policy and Management to track and improve the program.
Hunter said One2One was initiated during the pandemic, so they had to “think outside the box” when it came to training for and implementing the project. That meant training had to be done with social distancing in mind over the phone. When police made follow-up visits to those who had overdosed, “maybe they would go to their home and have a visit on the porch,” talk over the phone or meet outdoors in the park.
“The departments really got creative,” Hunter said. Piloting the program among 11 departments was a plus because they were able to share ideas on how to get the fentanyl test strip kits to those in need, despite the pandemic.
When asked if the program was successful, Hunter said the name of the program reflects its success, as “every one kit that was distributed, led to a referral to treatment or services.”
Rosenthal spoke about the dangers of fentanyl, a deadly synthetic opioid that is manufactured in a lab. “Many, many, many people are addicted to heroin and they are not using it to get high, they are using it to avoid withdrawal,” Rosenthal said. The problem is the more powerful fentanyl is being mixed with heroin, which can lead to an overdose death.
With no vaccine for opioids, Rosenthal said there are only two options for those caught in the opioid epidemic, long-term treatment and recovery, or death. “That is it, and the quickest way to die using opioids is with fentanyl,” Rosenthal said. Arresting someone for using drugs does not provide a solution, however. “It’s like trying to arrest your way out of a pandemic,” he said.
Overdose deaths are up during the coronavirus crisis as fentanyl is being cut with other drugs.
“On average, overdose deaths are up 20 percent,” Rosenthal said. “No one is talking about it because the pandemic is taking the oxygen out of everything.”
In October, Beverly’s Sgt. Costa wrote in support of the grant to expand One2One.
The Beverly Police Department is working with two organizations to prevent overdoses, Healthy Streets Outreach Program in Lynn and One Stop prevention and screening services in Gloucester. While officers can give out the test strips, Costa said, they can’t distribute Narcan, so Costa said it’s only natural the outreach programs distribute both.
Costa said the program “goes along with what we’ve been doing” in being more proactive in connecting those who use drugs to treatment and recovery services. “It’s kind of a natural thing to go along with,” Costa said.
