The day after learning there had been yet another fentanyl overdose death in Franklin, police Chief David Goldstein said the problem with opioids and methamphetamine is growing.
But, he added, so is the effort to combat drug addiction in the Three Rivers City.
“This is the right way to approach the problem, in my humble opinion,” Goldstein told a midday meeting of the Franklin Mayor’s Drug Task Force in the Franklin Studio coffee shop Wednesday.
The task force, which began in 2009 and is focused on prevention, has been looking to draw wider community involvement. Wednesday’s meeting was aimed specifically at business owners and others available during the lunch hour. Another like it was held in April, and more are planned on a quarterly basis.
Drug task force coordinator Angela Lynch said the last meeting was used to gather the experiences of those in the downtown business Franklin area.
“Some things we got were people seeing deals happening, or appearing to see deals happening,” Lynch said.
Other concerns were voiced about the potential effects of drug use in downtown Franklin: rising insurance rates, thefts and employees not passing drug tests.
During Wednesday’s meeting, more than a dozen concerned residents, business owners, coalition members and city councilors listened at Goldstein characterized Franklin’s drug problem from the perspective of police.
“We had another fentanyl overdose here in the city,” he said. “We’re obviously seeing more and more as we go on.”
Opioids, as well as methamphetamine, Goldstein said, are continuing to proliferate. It’s part of a statewide trend that Goldstein knows well as the Merrimack County vice president for the New Hampshire Association of Chiefs of Police.
He noted that the state medical examiner’s office is predicting another “banner year” for drug overdose deaths in New Hampshire. The Monitor reported earlier this week that 161 deaths have been confirmed so far in 2016.
“We’re going to lose a lot of people to drug use,” Goldstein said. “They’re going to pass away, they’re going to die. We have to face that.”
Goldstein said his department sees the most drug activity among an “older” population, people aged 30 to 40. He did not have statistics on local arrests or overdoses immediately available.
“What are we going to do to make the problem better in Franklin?” he asked. He said police are active in the community and investigating and arresting drug dealers, working on local, state and regional levels to share information and block trafficking. Goldstein added that people struggling with addiction become “part of the system” to get help.
“We’re going to have drug courts soon,” he said, referencing one of the various statewide efforts to promote treatment and recovery.
Pointing to the city’s drug task force, Goldstein added there was an equally important part of the equation.
“Let’s get to the kids, get to the problem before it’s a problem,” he said.
“We are talking grade school, we’re talking kindergarten, we’re talking at home,” Goldstein said. Comparing an anti-drug campaign with others such as preventing deaths by wearing a seatbelt or not smoking cigarettes, Goldstein said starting young has shown success in the past.
“This is what we want,” he said.
Using the Franklin High School Youth Risk Behavior Survey as a basis, the drug task force creates an action plan for its volunteers to accomplish. In addition to creating tangible goals – in the past, one has been to increase the perception of risk and to decrease the use of prescription drugs – Goldstein said the YRBS also shows that not all is bad in Franklin, and that the majority of students are drug-free.
The 2015 YRBS data show, for instance, that just 3 percent of Franklin High School students have ever used heroin or methamphetamine, and 13.8 percent of students have ever used prescription drugs without a doctor’s prescription.
“We’ve got people that are doing okay,” Goldstein said.
Toward the end of Wednesday’s meeting, Franklin Savings Bank president Ron Magoon asked Goldstein, “What as a community should we be focused on?”
The chief responded that everyone should be focused on increasing community involvement with the drug task force.
Franklin City Manager Elizabeth Dragon added, “It takes everyone to do it – it takes all the different sectors.”
Lynch, the drug task force coordinator, said attendance at meetings like the one Wednesday – and hearing feedback there – is a good place to start.
“It’ll drive the data, it’ll drive what we’re seeing physically,” she said.
Dragon said that in response to feedback that the downtown could benefit from a heavier police presence to hopefully reduce drug dealing, the area has since become patrolled by bicycling officers.
“Those are the types of things we do,” she said. “We look at what’s happening and we adjust things according to what we hear.”
Closing the meeting, Goldstein said that in the arena of drugs, Franklin has been a leader in both good and bad things. “We have this ability to do a lot of firsts,” he said.
For example, he said while Franklin had the state’s first-ever methamphetamine lab explosion, the city was also the first to adopt an ordinance banning “K2” or “spice,” a synthetic marijuana product that led to a rash of overdose hospitalizations in New Hampshire in 2014.
“This task force is, in my experience, the best I’ve ever seen,” Goldstein said. “This is the way to do it – and that should be out there in emblazoned lights.”
(Elodie Reed can be reached at 369-3306, ereed@cmonitor.com or on Twitter @elodie_reed.)