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Vaira Harik, project manager for Barnstable County’s Department of Human Services, is working on a report about Cape Cod’s substance abuse problem.
BARNSTABLE – For more than a year, Barnstable County officials have been working to coordinate resources on the problem of substance abuse, from creating a comprehensive listing of providers on their website to tabulating the cost of substance abuse on the county.
Now they are working on the next step in the process, hearing from focus groups who are involved in all aspects of the problem. The feedback from those focus groups will go into a comprehensive report that will be released in July laying out steps going forward in approaching the problem.
Vaira Harik, a project manager in the Barnstable County Department of Human Services, is coordinating the project for the county. She said one of the most alarming aspects of the original study was the small amount of money spent on prevention efforts in the region.
The county’s initial report outlined how big the problem of substance abuse is on Cape Cod.
The Barnstable County Regional Substance Abuse Council’s baseline assessment report, which was released earlier this year, determined the direct cost of drug and alcohol abuse on the Cape in 2013 was over $110 million.
Speaking about the report at the time of its release, Barnstable County’s Director of Human Services Beth Albert said two areas made up 97 percent of the spending.
“The majority of the expenditures is in the area of law enforcement and treatment and recovery activites,” she said.
Law enforcement accounted for 52 percent of the total cost of combating substance abuse and included spending by police, courts, probation, the sheriff’s office and correctional facility and the district attorney’s office.
Treatment and recovery costs made up 47 percent of the total cost.
The report also states that the heroin and prescription opioid addiction epidemic is a public health emergency with over 3 percent of the population of Cape Cod addicted or opioid dependent.
The report also indicated that alcohol addiction on the Cape is endemic with 7.9 percent of the population in the county abusing alcohol, which is more than all other substances combined.
“We want to make sure that we are not ignoring the endemic alcohol dependence problem on Cape Cod,” said Albert.
Albert said she was surprised by the lack of resources devoted to prevention, which was less than 1 percent of the total cost of combating substance abuse.
Listen below to Vaira Harik discuss the county’s current work in the area of substance abuse.
