By Mark Hansel
NKyTribune managing editor
U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell was in Northern Kentucky Friday to discuss the region’s recent inclusion in the Ohio High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area (HIDTA).
Sen. McConnell, R-KY, was joined by Derek Siegle, director of OHIO HIDTA and local elected officials and law enforcement and health care professionals at the Kenton County Detention Center.
McConnell has strongly urged the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) to include Boone, Campbell and Kenton counties in Ohio HIDTA.
“It’s a pretty exciting day for us in Kentucky, particularly Northern Kentucky,” McConnell said. “As we all know we, have been talking about it for several years, we have an enormous heroin (and) opioid addiction problem.”
In the past, a HIDTA designation includes about $50,000 in additional funding for local drug eradication and treatment efforts.
While $50,000 may not seem like a large amount of money, McConnell said under the new Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act (CARA) legislation there will be additional funding available and, he added,” It’s more than you are getting now.”
The conference took place at the Kenton County Detention Center.
Kim Moser, director of the Northern Kentucky Office of Drug Control Policy, said the designation will assist the local efforts already underway, including a program at the Kenton County Detention Center that is becoming a national model.
Under the direction of Jailer Terry Carl, the county hired Jason Merrick as director of inmate addiction services to implement a program that allows inmates to receive treatment during incarceration. The program provides 100 beds for individuals seeking treatment and has helped dispel the myth that addicts don’t want to get well.
“It’s a phenomenal program and it’s the very first program that we implemented,” Moser said. “We know that 83 percent of inmates are in on a drug-related charge, so we are reaching them where they are.”
The re-arrest rate of those who have gone through the program is just 10 percent, compared to an average of 70 percent recidivism for those who do not receive treatment.
In addition to extra funding, the HIDTA designation will allow state and local partners to directly benefit and efficiently leverage federal resources to help tackle the prescription opioid and heroin crisis and drug interdiction efforts.
McConnell said he will be looking forward to seeing who applies for funding in Kentucky and that his office will try to be helpful in getting money approved.
“Those of us in our state involved on the treatment side of this, there is going to be a lot of new money available,” McConnell said. “Fortunately you in Northern Kentucky are extremely well organized. I know (you are) becoming experts on the law already because we’ve got a website in our office that sort of helps you figure your way through the application process.”
Siegle talked in more detail about what the HIDTA designation will mean locally.
“Our primary mission is drug enforcement; working drug traffic organizations that are bringing mass quantities of heroin, fentanyl, cocaine, other legal drugs into our communities and creating these addiction problems,” Siegle said. “We are not out there working the street; we are working the people that are bringing this epidemic to our communities.”
While HIDTA is not directly “working the streets,” the designation offers enormous benefits for those that are.
“It will bring training opportunities, analytical support; it will bring our deconfliction system that helps avoid duplicate efforts by different agencies working the same drug subject,” Siegle said. “(It will) keep our officers safe… (when) they are operating in the same area, the same drug subjects and don’t know. The system alerts them if any other law enforcement people are going to be in that area that day, so we don’t have what we call a blue-on-blue situation.”
It is this collaboration, which has been a hallmark of HIDTA, that Siegle says will provide the most significant benefit locally.
“The funding helps and the training and the analytical support, but what it does when you are part of HIDTA, you have direct contact, more access,” Siegle said. “You become more comfortable with sharing drug information with the other 15 drug task forces throughout Ohio that we fund, including the DEA and FBI task forces in Cincinnati, which obviously have great influence on this portion of Kentucky.”
Contact Mark Hansel at mark.hansel@nkytrib.com