Amidst a rash of recent overdoses in the village of Mamaroneck, the mayor, Police Department, schools and concerned residents have begun to galvanize in an attempt to fight back against a sweeping opiate epidemic.
According to village police, five overdoses have taken place in the village since July—two of which were fatal—prompting cries from concerned residents and a call to action from Mayor Norman Rosenblum, a Republican.
“It’s a true epidemic,” the mayor said. “It’s one of the greatest threats to society in general.”
Village police said that while toxicology reports are still pending, opiates appear to have been involved in at least several if not all of the overdoses; two of which occurred between Sept. 2 and Sept 6. According to the police, the ages of the victims are 59, 30, 28, 25 and 24. They were unable to provide any further details on the most recent overdose, but two of the overdoses were stabilized from the emergency overdose prevention drug Narcan.
In response, Rosenblum said the village will form a new Committee on Drug Abuse Policy designed to help combat the deadly scourge in the community.
Currently, the mayor said, the committee consists of himself, Deputy Mayor Louis Santoro, a Republican, village police Chief Chris Leahy, village residents and students, as well as Westchester County District Attorney James McCarty and Village Court Justice Christie Derrico.
While representatives from Mamaroneck’s school district were not invited to the first meeting, Rosenblum said that Schools Superintendent Dr. Robert Shaps was invited and will be attending the committee’s next meeting on Sept. 22.
According to Rosenblum, among the specific objectives of the committee will be to raise awareness of the severity of the drug problem facing the village. By bringing members of the community together with school administrators and police, he hopes that open dialogue can affect change.
“When we bury this stuff, what we’re really burying are the kids,” the mayor said?]]
While an official policy has yet to be outlined by the committee, one area that the mayor has targeted for increased efforts is the Mamaroneck school district; an arena Rosenblum considers paramount to helping prevent drug abuse before it’s too late.
According to Helene Fremder, a social worker for Mamaroneck High School and coordinator for the social work department in the school district, the committee??]]coalition marks a significant step toward helping young adults stray away from drug use.
“It takes a community to make a dent in these kinds of changes,” she said. “It has to be a multi-pronged approach.”
Currently, she said, despite 35 percent of the high school’s health lessons being devoted to drug education, and an array of school programs that promote healthy lifestyles, there are currently no programs that address opioid or opiate abuse specifically.
Opioids, she explained, are covered under the normal health curriculum amidst other drugs, and there is currently no prevention work directed solely at opioids or opiates.
However, for young adults, opiate and opioid abuse presents a unique risk, with opiates use rates more than doubling amongst 18- to 25-year-olds over the past decade, according to the national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, CDC. Forty-five percent of heroin addicts, the center says, started with abusing prescription medication.
One village of Larchmont resident, Susanna Herlitz-Ferguson, who joined efforts to prevent opioid abuse after one of her four children saw several of his acquaintances fall victim to drug overdoses, said she feels there just isn’t enough being done in the community.
“Suburban towns have an extreme desire for perfect reputations, to attract people to come live in the community,” she said, adding that as a result drug use tends to get “swept under the rug.”
Herlitz-Ferguson, who is a member of the recently formed committee, hopes that by creating open conversation about drug abuse in Mamaroneck, perceptions in the community will change as well.
“All the parents believe this couldn’t happen to their children,” she said. “We need to wake people up.”
According to the CDC, fatal heroin overdoses, spurred by spikes in the use of prescription opioids like oxycodone, have skyrocketed in the past decade, quadrupling to more than 10,000 per year in the U.S. between 2002 to 2014.
In response, onus has shifted, not just to federal and state elected officials—the former of which is currently contemplating allocating $1.1 billion to opioid prevention funding nationwide—but to local communities such as Mamaroneck.
On Thursday, Sept. 22, after press time, Herlitz-Ferguson, in addition to several other concerned residents, will hold an open forum at the Regatta to discuss how to address rising drug use in the community and what both parents and kids can do about it.
The meeting, which Herlitz-Ferguson hopes will be one of many, is just one step toward addressing Mamaroneck’s problem, she said.
“It’s better late than never,” she said.
