ST. GEORGE, S.C. (WCSC) – Dorchester County Council is considering more than $200,000 of state funding towards more streamlined communication across law enforcement agencies to prevent more opioid overdoses.
This would be a part of their Dorchester County Opioid Abatement Program, which has the goals of drug prevention, treatment, enforcement and intervention.
The county is considering allocating the state funds they already have in Monday night’s county council meeting.
Dorchester Deputy County Administrator for Public Safety Mario Formisano says the program’s funding comes from the South Carolina Opioid Recovery Fund, which is designed to remedy the effects of the opioid epidemic in the state.
Dorchester County has approximately $1.6 million that it is eligible to use towards approved programs for treatment and prevention.
“We can begin determining how to prioritize the use of those funds based on the needs here in the community,” Formisano says.
Dorchester County Council has to approve $220,360 of this state funding in order to fill the gaps in how different agencies coordinate. This would then help start their critical incident management system, according to Dorchester County Alcohol and Drug Commission Interagency Coordinator Chris Rollison. This system would give law enforcement agencies the same access of information to drug overdose cases to help prevent more from happening down the road.
“The hardest thing to measure is what doesn’t happen,” Rollison said. “You know, if we’re doing prevention right, how do you measure that? That’s a really tricky thing.”
In a case example, this management system would tell law enforcement what kind of response occurred, whether the person received treatment, whether they went to the detention center, and whether there was a follow-up.
“We’ll be able to track some of that data to see how effective, honestly,” Rollison said. “That will be one way we measure the effectiveness of our strategies.”
The $220,360 would also fund Rollison’s position as interagency coordinator and fund the purchase of Randox Multistat Toxicology, which provides the coroner’s office with rapid toxicology tests to use in cases in which they suspect an overdose and provides the detention center tests to use if someone is showing any signs of drug use.
Over the last eight months, Rollison says the team has hosted listening sessions for those in recovery to see how they think this money should be spent.
“We believe that we shouldn’t be doing anything for them without them,” Rollison said. “And them, at this pace, is people with substance issues.”
Following Monday night’s county council request, county officials say they hope to build out the action steps within the next quarter and start implementing this plan by the first of next year.
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