EDITORIAL: Law and order and health care

Police officers and sheriff’s deputies in Ozaukee  County couldn’t be blamed for occasionally asking themselves, “Did I really sign up for this?”

These men and women trained to be law enforcers have been pressed into service as health care providers. They perform that service under the extreme pressure of knowing they are responsible for saving a life.

The standard kit for all law enforcement officers now includes badge, gun, handcuffs—and Narcan dispensers. They use the medication to save the lives of drug users who have overdosed on fentanyl and other opioids.

They encounter people who are about to die from fentanyl poisoning as first responders to emergencies, as law officers arresting drug offenders and even in the Ozaukee County Jail,  where in two episodes prisoners had somehow acquired and ingested fentanyl that would have killed them if deputies had not administered Narcan.

The officers aren’t complaining. They know it’s part of their job, and that the public appreciates it. In March, four deputies and a Sheriff’s Office nurse were honored at a ceremony where they were given the Sheriff’s Office Lifesaving Award for reviving an inmate fentanyl user who had stopped breathing.

The growing role of police officers in treating fentanyl poisoning is a stark measure of the spreading menace. Nearly 80,000 Americans, many of them adolescents, died from fentanyl overdoses last year. Often mixed with other opioids without the user’s knowledge, fetanyal is so lethal that, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration, 60% of pills containing the substance can be fatal in a single dose.

Fentanyl is an equal opportunity killer. No place in the U.S. is safe from it. Type “fentanyl” in the search bar on the Ozaukee Press website, and numerous news stories about fentanyl arrests and deaths in Ozaukee County will pop up. One of the stories offers an insight into how ubiquitous the drug has become—a woman walking her dog on New Year’s Day 2023 found a bag of fentanyl powder on a sidewalk beside Port Washington High School.

The onus on police and other first responders to deal with the effects of fentanyl is growing apace with the supply of the deadly synthetic opioid, which is increasing in spite of the DEA’s efforts to slow the flow into the country. Those efforts have not been helped by the political exploitation of the fear and heartbreak caused by the fentanyl death toll.

The assertion that the fentanyl plague is caused by immigrant asylum seekers smuggling the drug into the country was a standard falsehood in Donald Trump’s campaign speeches, followed by the unkeepable promise that curtailing asylum would end the menace.

The Cato Institute, the respected conservative think tank, reported: “Fentanyl is overwhelmingly smuggled by U.S. citizens almost entirely for U.S. citizen consumers.”

The Cato analysis was based on data provided by the DEA indicating that only 279 of 1.8 million arrests by the Border Patrol of illegal border crossers resulted in a fentanyl seizure. American citizens account for more than 80% of the convictions of fentanyl traffickers, compared to 9% for illegal immigrants. The analysis found that almost all of the fentanyl brought into the country enters at legal border crossings in the possession of U.S. citizens.

There is no reason to hope the fentanyl plague will moderate, much less go away, but there is some comfort in the progress made by government at the federal, state and local levels in providing the means to save the lives of fentanyl victims. That progress revolves around the wonder drug naloxone that revives opioid users who are at the brink of death.

The FDA approved Narcan, the nasal spray form of naloxone, as an over-the-counter medication in 2023. It is now available at pharmacies and in vending machines in public places. Most importantly, states are acquiring it in adequate quantities for use by first responders, paying for it with funding from lawsuits against the pharmaceutical industry for irresponsible marketing of legal opioids.

Wisconsin’s share of the pharma litigation awards is $764 million. Last year, the state Department of Health Services used some of it to buy and distribute 31,580 doses of Narcan to local police and sheriff’s departments.

The police officers and deputies of Ozaukee County are well supplied with Narcan, which, unfortunately, is now an essential piece of law enforcement gear.