According to city and county leaders, those numbers should be 100 percent because drugs affect every person in Montgomery County in someway or another.
According to the Montgomery County Health Department’s 2015 Community Health Assessment survey, 82 percent of participants believe heroin and meth use is a community problem, and 71 percent of participants believe the abuse of prescription pain medications is a community problem.
But according to city and county leaders, those numbers should be 100 percent because drugs affect every person in Montgomery County in someway or another.
“It is much more prevalent than people think,” Mayor Todd Barton said. “The average person does not realize that they probably come in contact with people on drugs every day in this community. I would guess they probably do. You probably don’t recognize it, but you do. It is that prevalent in our community.”
And if that doesn’t matter, taxes might.
In the Montgomery County Youth Service Bureau’s CASA program, Child Appointed Special Advocates, 98 percent of the children they are currently serving are there because of their parents’ substance abuse.
“They think it doesn’t impact their lives,” said YSB’s Executive Director Karen Branch, “but with a child who comes into the state’s custody and is placed in a foster home, our tax dollars through the Department of Children’s Services are paying for those placements. As well we should. But wouldn’t it be great if we didn’t have a need to place those children because we had addressed the substance abuse issue that their parents are suffering from?”
And that is just one example of the way drugs affect taxpayer money.
“Look at the county’s budget,” Barton said. “How much of our county taxpayer money is spent on criminal justice system? It is very, very high. And that is fueled by the drug problem. So when you take the courts and probation and the jail and everything associated with that, I can’t imagine how small that expenditure would be—how much it would shrink—if drugs just disappeared. That’s a nice thought, but it would be much, much smaller. It really would.”
The fight against drugs has become sort of a balancing act. City and county officials believe stopping the cycle of drugs starts with helping the people who are addicted to the drugs. As Barton said, where there is a market, there will always be a supply. But until then, law enforcement is doing everything they can to simply get the drugs off the streets.
Crawfordsville Police Chief Mike Norman said his department is more focused on getting drugs out of houses and off the streets than any other crime. Why? Because they coincide.
“It’s difficult to look at in one perspective because it is an addiction issue,” Norman said. “And addiction is one thing. But what comes with the addiction — what the addicts have to do to feed the addiction — is where the problem lies. That’s my opinion. The thefts, the robberies, the burglaries. Those things tend to take place to feed the addiction, and you can’t really beat the addiction that easily either. So it’s difficult all around.”
And for CPD, and even for the state, there is not one clear drug to target because polysubstance abuse has increased throughout the state. For those addicted to drugs, it’s their own kind of balancing act.
“What you hear is that they do one to balance the other,” Norman said. “When you find one, you generally find something else to go with it. If they’re tired of the effects of the meth, they do a pill or do marijuana to get them down to what they think is normal. And that’s the poly use.”
Unfortunately, this is the part where citizens begin to get overwhelmed and freeze.
“Sometimes I think it feels very overwhelming,” Branch said. “And I think sometimes because people get overwhelmed, they think no matter what we do, we’re never going to make it better. So you kind of just don’t do anything.”
But for law enforcement, this is making them want to attack the drug problem like never before.
“We’re trying very hard.” Norman said. “I want to add officers to put a unit together that that’s all they focus on. We have narcotics and that type of thing now. But I want to make Crawfordsville and Montgomery County that place where the bad guys won’t come because they know we’re going to be on them.”
“We just keep trying to attack and attack,” Barton said. “I think we’re doing a good job of attacking. We have a long way to go. We’re trying to send a clear message that if you’re coming into this community to addict our people and sell in our community, we’re coming after you. It just takes a while.”
But combating the drug problem is not just a job for CPD or the Mayor’s office. There is something each and every community member can do to help.
“I think everybody in our community can do something,” Branch said, “whether it’s paying attention to activity that seems suspicious, whether it’s volunteering to help in a school, whether it’s being a mentor for a child because we know the one thing that’s proven to be effective in prevention is having a one-on-one adult they respect and have a relationship with that helps guide them to make positive decisions.”
Anonymous tips can be made to the Crawfordsville Police Department by calling 362-3762.
To help children and youth who have been affected by substance abuse, contact Karen Branch at the Youth Service Bureau at 362-0694.
