Guamanians who remember the 1970s and early ’80s will portray a Guam darkened by the scourge of heroin. As the epidemic of heroin addiction took hold, the rates of murder, armed robbery, and broken families skyrocketed. Eventually, the scourge ended, and the heroin epidemic was replaced by the meth epidemic. Imagine if both co-existed.
Heroin is an opioid drug. And since the 1970s, its properties have been enhanced and even chemically replicated into much more dangerous drugs like fentanyl. These opioids are here. More people are getting addicted. The fear, is that the epidemic will make a comeback.
And that’s why Attorney General Douglas Moylan is shepherding the Opioid Recovery Advisory Council to invest money in both drug interdiction, and drug abuse recovery efforts.
Mr. Moylan is chairman of the council, which is the body assigned under the terms of a nationwide settlement to administer Guam’s portion of funds from a class action lawsuit settlement.
Nearly $2.7 million remains in the fund.
“My intent is to invite each member to provide ideas on what expenditures will help to fight Guam’s out of control drug addiction by our residents, and to engage our Council in spirited discussion,” Mr. Moylan wrote in the opening page of his agenda for the council’s first meeting during his tenure.
The council consists of members from GovGuam’s health and law enforcement agencies, the local court and public defender agency, the legislative speaker, and the drug recovery group Toghe Guam. Lt. Gov. Joshua Tenorio also attended and participated in the meeting. It is the council that decides how the funds are expended.
And in this first meeting, every council member agreed to the urgency of allocating funds for both recovery and law enforcement activities to stop drugs from entering the island and hitting the streets. And nearly every proposal from Mr. Moylan for the use of about half the funds was met with unanimous approval from the council.
Among the appropriations the council approved were:
- The purchase of 18 drug detection dogs (Belgian Malinois). According to program coordinator Col. Philip Taijeron, Jr. from the Guam Customs and Quarantine Agency, four of these dogs will go to the Guam Police Department, and another four to the Department of Corrections. The rest will be used by Customs for drug detection at the borders (the air and seaports).
- A Meth Treatment Initiative to be administered by the Guam Behavioral Health and Wellness Center for imprisoned inmates and jailed detainees with meth addiction.
- The purchase of antidotes for fentanyl exposure in humans and for the drug detection dogs.
- The purchase of drug testing kits.
- Money for Tohge Guam’s peer support program to help addicts in recovery under their program.
Here are highlights of that discussion, including testimony by council member Duane Calvo, who abused methamphetamine for years, went to federal prison for meth-related crimes, and turned his life around.
