New Hampshire residents struggling with heroin addiction and other substance abuse problems will soon be able to call a state hotline for help.
Gov. Maggie Hassan announced the hotline Tuesday at the opening of a summit on substance abuse, saying the 24-hour hotline will start up later this week. She also urged participants to lobby their state lawmakers, who are voting this week on measures that would expand the state’s drug courts, provide more support for police in hard-hit communities and upgrade the prescription monitoring program.
Thanking those in recovery who have shared their stories, Hassan said: “Their bravery needs to be matched by our action. Everyone here has an important role to play.”
More than 800 people from health care, law enforcement, education and other fields attended the conference in Manchester devoted to the state’s rising drug crisis. Thousands of people overdosed on drugs in New Hampshire last year, and more than 400 died. The numbers could rise this year, the Democratic governor said.
“With each of these deaths our families lose loved ones, our businesses lose valuable workers, our future shrinks before us,” Hassan said.
The crisis hotline announcement was just a small part of the daylong gathering, which included more than 30 sessions on prevention, treatment and recovery. U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack, who is leading an Obama administration initiative on rural drug abuse, used his personal story of his mother’s struggle with alcohol and pills to emphasize the need for “circles of support” when someone decides to seek help.
For his mother, that moment came on Christmas Day in 1963.
“She was on a train, drunk, to Philly to see her brother, when she had that moment – that split-second of recognition that as horrible as she had been, as many times as she had lied, as many times as she had disappointed, God still loved her,” he said. “She sought help.”
Also in the audience were Gregory and Linda Drugan of Derry whose 30-year-old son died of an overdose last month, and Chris Overka, a recent graduate of the drug court program in Nashua.
“Do we want to have to acknowledge more and more parents of young people we’ve lost, or would we prefer to celebrate more Chrises? I think it’s pretty clear,” Vilsack said. “More prevention. More treatment. More community support.”