A panel comprised of Bethlehem Mayor Robert Donchez, Bethlehem Police Chief Mark DiLuzio, Northampton County Coroner Zachary Lysek, Lehigh County Coroner Scott Grim, and Amanda Major Foehr, a certified recovery specialist from the Lehigh Valley Drug and Intake Unit, painted a challenging picture at an April 6 public forum addressing heroin addiction in the Lehigh Valley. About 25 attended the session in the Bethlehem Area Public Library’s Laros Room at the Main Branch.

Donchez, a retired educator who served as chair of the student assistance program when he taught at William Allen HS, also served on Governor Tom Wolf’s drug and alcohol transition team. Reciting a number of compelling statistics concerning the demographics of drug abuse, Donchez said heroin causes the most common overdose.

Statistically one out of four families include someone dealing with a substance abuse problem, Donchez said.

“You have to look for the warning signs,” he said. “Change in behavior, isolation and changes of friends” are the signals to be alert for, and “parents have to be involved.”

Foehr said every participant in Drug Court receives assistance with recovery. Using data and other information, she painted a challenging picture if society is going to make inroads into what she called an “addiction epidemic.

“We must educate medical professionals,’ said Foehr, who noted the level of opiate prescriptions being written. In conjunction with that she indicated that a better overall prescription drug monitoring system needs to be implemented. In addition, she said the prescription drop box program needs to be expanded so unused prescriptions can be disposed of safely, and that public education must continue.

Foehr mentioned treatment options such as detox, in-patient, halfway houses, counseling and medication assisted treatment and stressed the importance of recovery support services and peer involvement.

“Addiction is a disease and recovery is a lifelong process,” she summarized.

Chief DiLuzio said heroin is “cheap, easy and deadly, and it’s an issue in elementary, middle and high schools.”

DiLuzio said in 2015 Bethlehem emergency services staff administered the drug nalaxone, also known by its brand name of Narcan, 75 times to combat overdoses. The drug blocks the effects of an opioid overdose if administered in time. It has already been used 19 times during the first quarter of 2016.

Northampton County Coroner Zachary Lysek said autopsies have shown that it is seldom just heroin causing drug overdose related deaths, but more a mixture of drugs. His Lehigh County counterpart, Scott Grim, said drug related deaths are increasing, citing statistics from 2014, 2015 and 2016 to date. All agreed that the over-prescription of pain killers is becoming a problem.

One attendee, a clinical director at a Lehigh Valley-based methadone clinic, noted the successful treatment strategy her organization has had. A Bethlehem resident called for alternative drugs that could be used to address pain management.

The most heartbreaking testimony came from a Bethlehem area mother whose son died of an overdose earlier this year. She chronicled how his addiction started in 2013 with prescription drugs.

“Every day we struggle as a family,” she said, “and my goal is that if I can help one person get through this, I will do anything.”

DiLuzio summed it up when he said, “We are losing a whole part of our society” to this epidemic.