Singas: Opioid crisis is lowering life expectancy

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The opioid crisis facing Nassau County is also darkening the nation’s horizons, with the average life expectancy in the United States declining for the second consecutive year in 2016, according to Nassau County District Attorney Madeline Singas.

Singas, who spoke to an audience of advocates and professionals in the substance abuse and law enforcement fields on March 15 at Molloy College, maintained that the change was fueled by a 21 percent rise in the death rate from drug overdoses, as reported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. According to the CDC, average life expectancy for men has dropped from 78.7 years to 78.6 years.

Beyond the statistics, Singas’s office faces the epidemic head-on every day.

In Merrick, a physician is preparing to go to trial in just weeks on federal charges of overprescribing opioids for his own profit — and causing two overdose deaths.

Michael Belfiore is charged with writing thousands of prescriptions illegally, although his attorney, Tom Liotti, of Garden City, has portrayed pharmaceutical companies and poor regulation as the real problem, and Belfiore as a victim.

“I get phone calls, emails and letters every single day from someone in the community who’s at a loss for what to do with a loved one who’s struggling with addiction, or who has just lost someone to opioids,” Singas said. “The number of opioid overdose deaths in Nassau County last year, as of Nov. 1, was 147,” she said. “There were 13 homicides in Nassau during that time.”

She went on to say that the crisis goes beyond 147 isolated cases. The people who died were members of families, and the ripple effect also impacts people at the victims’ jobs and in their communities and faith-based centers.

Singas’s audience of mostly professionals from Nassau and Suffolk counties were there for a half-day conference called Bridging the Borders, where they learned not only statistics but about powerful new drugs on the streets, dangerous new websites where people can easily purchase legal and illegal drugs and where to find help.

Free overdose-prevention training was offered at the end of the conference, and each participant left with the knowledge needed to save a life — as well as their own naloxone kit. The training was given by staff from the YES Community Counseling Center, based in Levittown and Massapequa. YES Executive Director Jamie Bogenshutz chairs a subcommittee of the Nassau County Heroin Prevention Task Force, which organized the conference.

Singas said that her office has a three-pronged approach to the opioid crisis that is funded mainly by money confiscated in drug arrests: education, treatment and enforcement.

For education, Singas said, prosecutors visit Nassau schools a couple of times a month, boosting awareness of drug dangers and abuse recognition for school nurses and parents. As for treatment, she stressed that addiction is a disease and shouldn’t be treated like a moral failing.

Singas also devotes resources to a 24/7 facility that can pick up people who have been revived from an overdose, and are about to be discharged from the hospital. And at the facility — Maryhaven New Hope, in Freeport — addiction professionals can immediately begin treatment.

On the enforcement end, Singas spoke about several major “drug takedowns” over the past year, during which Nassau police worked with the DEA and FBI to get to the source of the drugs coming in to the county. After she spoke, she told reporters that she has some legislation that could strengthen penalties for drug sales — especially those that lead to an overdose death.

Floral Park Police Officer John Groshan’s presentation at the conference focused on the Dark Web, and the contraband that any computer-literate person can easily order there. Sites on the Dark Web offer legal and illegal drugs, drug paraphernalia, weapons, child pornography and even contract killings, among other things.

According to Groshan, the U.S. has more prescriptions written for pain medication — by far — than any other country. In Germany, on the other hand, doctors only prescribe opiates for end-of-life care. Groshan said that deaths from fentanyl — a synthetic opioid up to 100 times stronger than morphine — increased by 160 percent statewide, from 2015-16.

Anyone with a problem with any mind or mood-altering substance can call the Long Island Crisis center 24/7 at (516) 679-1111.