June 28th, 2017 by WCBC Radio
When asked for his view on how the fight against heroin and opioid abuse in Maryland is going, Frederick County Sheriff Chuck Jenkins offered an honest, but bleak assessment when he said that “nothing is working". Locally the impact is being felt by health system providers. Last August, Barry Ronan, president and chief executive officer of Western Maryland Health System, joined an opioid task force that brought together a wide cross-section of people in Allegany County. It happened after Ronan was forced to ask that a police officer be stationed in Western Maryland's emergency room from 3 p.m. to 7 a.m. every day to deal with the surge of sometimes violent addicts arriving for treatment. In the past two years, Western Maryland Health has spent nearly $1.5 million in additional costs from opioid-related patient treatment. Allegany County Sheriff Craig Robertson said the opioid crisis is digging deep into his department’s resources…
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