Experts weigh in on drug abuse, community impact

A public form on the impact of drug abuse in the community was held April 12 at SUNY Poly in Utica.

From inside the walls of the Oneida County Jail to the streets young and old walk every day, drugs have become a rapidly growing problem for citizens, families, and officials.

According to Oneida County Sheriff Robert Maciol, 538 admitted inmates at the jail used heroin last year. Jodi Kapes, a licensed clinical social worker says that emergency room visits related to non-medical drugs has risen 98.4 percent at the two ERs in the Mohawk Valley Health System.

How to tackle such a growing impact on our community is no easy task, and it is with that in mind, that SUNY Polytechnic Institute, The Genesis Group, and WKTV teamed up to hold a public forum April 12 featuring law enforcement and recovery experts on drug abuse and crime in Oneida County.

While the forum focused on the overall impact of drugs in the community, one topic that many of the 12 speakers honed in on was that of the rising numbers of cases involving or related to heroin.

“This is what we are dealing with continuously and nonstop,” Rome Police Captain Tim Bates said.

Bates told the crowd that heroin has reached the level of a full-on epidemic in the last several years, leading to the highest levels of retail theft in the city of Rome’s history along with increases in illegal escort services and fraudulent returns.

“We are seeing the entire moral fabric of our community disintegrate,” Bates said.

Captain Bates equated the efforts to combat this growing epidemic as “spinning our wheels,” noting that the need for prevention and treatment to address the damage of heroin is crucial, a sentiment that was shared by Utica Police Chief Mark Williams.

“We cannot arrest our way out of this problem,” Williams said. “I’ve been a police officer for 28 years and I’ve never seen a drug as deadly and dangerous as heroin.”

The forum was hosted by WKTV’s Jason Powles and moderated by Ray Durso of the Genesis Group. It can be watched in its entirety at WKTV’s website.