3 days ago
Attorney general applauds city-county opioid abatement project
Claremore and Rogers County's joint opioid abatement project is "nothing short of remarkable," said Attorney General Gentner Drummond.
Drummond's office granted the city and county about $500,000 last fall to combat the spread of opioids in the community. Using money the state received from 2022 settlements with pharmaceutical companies, the Oklahoma Opioid Abatement Revolving Fund paid out $12 million to 85 entities last year and is getting ready for a second round of awards.
The city and county have used those funds to hire a grant manager and two personnel to provide GED prep and testing in the county jail. The funding also buoys the Women in Recovery program offered through Tulsa Family and Children's Services.
Drummond visited the Rogers County Courthouse May 30 to discuss the state of the abatement project. Fourteen people – from city and county leaders to Family and Children's Services personnel to people involved with the county's drug court – sat with Drummond around a rectangle of tables.
"One of the takeaways I want you to get from this time together is that this involves a lot of people, a lot of directions, a lot of expertise, a lot of people that really, really care about tackling this opioid crisis," said Scott Greenland, hired by the county last December to manage the grant.
Greenland said opioid deaths are increasing in Rogers County. Eight people died of an overdose in the county in 2019; that number climbed to 28 in 2022, then dipped slightly to 23 in 2023. Greenland said men are twice as likely to die of an overdose than women, and men aged 35 to 45 face the highest risk.
In 2024, Greenland said, 116 overdoses occurred in Rogers County. Nearly all the overdoses occurred in residential areas, but other than that, Greenland said no common thread ties them together. He compared the geographical spread to the random locations of marbles dropped from a helicopter.
"We don't know exactly how to tackle that yet, but we're working in that direction, realizing that it's not an easy, quick fix," Greenland said. "This is something that we've got to strategically look at."
Claremore City Manager John Feary said he and District 3 Commissioner Ron Burrows had first talked about a joint opioid abatement initiative several years ago, but neither the city nor the county had the money then.
Feary said he is thankful the state Legislature and Drummond had made funds available, and that partner organizations like Family and Children's Services and local recovery houses had joined the team to provide their expertise.
The city and county have leaned on these partner organizations to provide high school equivalency exams and parenting classes to inmates in the Rogers County jail, help inmates find stable employment upon release and give those recovering from addiction a temporary place to live.
Lani Burns, director of employment and education at Family and Children's Services, said a stable job and a gain in education level are the two biggest factors in decreasing recidivism.
"If we combine expertise, and that's what this collaboration is all about, we allow for pathways and cycles to break within that familial cycle of addiction and incarceration," Burns said.
The other part of the city and county's strategy of combating opioids is teaching kids why they're harmful. Greenland said school-based prevention is evidence-based and differs from past "just say no" approaches by showing students how drugs like fentanyl affect their bodies, brains and futures.
He said about 1,215 of Rogers County's 13,500 public school students have received prevention education from local nonprofits Rogers County Youth Services or KeyChoices. Greenland said he aims to increase this percentage from 9% to 40% in the next few years.
Burrows said school prevention is the heart of the project.
"It starts with the youth," Burrows said. "We know we got an issue with adults, and how do you break the cycle?"
The county introduced Drummond to Chantel Reben, two years sober after going through Rogers County's drug court and Family and Children's Services Women in Recovery program.
Reben said she grew up surrounded by addiction and went to prison for drugs in Okmulgee County in 2012. A recovery program helped her get clean, and she established a life in Claremore for her and her son. But after a life-altering car accident injured her son, Reben relapsed, which culminated in 2022 with another arrest and the threat of 15 years behind bars.
She said Judge Stephen Pazzo and Chrisie Stone, coordinator of Rogers County's drug court, saved her from prison because they understood she needed treatment for her addiction. She entered Women in Recovery and received trauma therapy.
Reben said she graduated from drug court May 15.
"I was given the opportunity to address my trauma, my loss, my addiction, my health, that reunification with my child, and I've returned to a truer version of myself," Reben said. "... I have a well-paying job — which I will be leaving to right after this — I'm supported in my community and my son is as well. I have fully reunified with him, and I'm actually in a healthy, loving relationship."
After the meeting, Drummond said Claremore and Rogers County are deploying the opioid funds exactly how his office intended they be used. He said the city-county project should serve as a template for other entities seeking to combat opioid addiction in their communities.
"We can invest money today with our youngest citizens and avoid this heartbreak as they become workforce-ready or not," Drummond said. "It's commendable ... to look at [Reben], truly, a wonderful young person that was on a path of destruction and lived hard years, but now I'm so proud of her in her sobriety, and she's got partnerships around her. They're gonna lift her up and keep her straight."
Drummond said that regrettably, many local governments in Oklahoma aren't taking advantage of the settlement money.
His office plans to distribute $28 million in its next tranche, for which applications close Friday. Claremore and Rogers County are asking for $2.4 million. From then on, the Attorney General's office will open grant applications every three years.
