My Experience with the Opioid Epidemic

By Connor Matteson ‘22

Squinting in the sudden sunlight, I climbed out of the large, squarish truck. The vehicle, all-white except for a long, violet stripe stretching around its midrim and the emblazoned words “HOPE ONE” on its side, stood tall in the parking lot of the Dover Community Center. In a past life, it had served as the mode of transportation for one of the Morris County Sheriff Office’s SWAT teams. However, thanks to  the opioid crisis that has raged across America for the past three years, it serves out a role that is decidedly more compassionate.

The truck was parked beside the Community Center’s main entrance, out of which spilled a long line of local families, homeless people, and even a recent veteran of the War in Afghanistan. They had come out in droves that morning because of the enormous stockpile of donated clothing currently housed in the Center, certainly not our truck. It was only after the mix of volunteers and sheriff’s office personnel working the truck that day set up an adjoining table featuring donuts, bagged snacks, and hot coffee that people began to drift over.

Dover is a working class New Jersey town thirty one miles west of New York City. It is located along Interstate 80, the local stretch of which is colloquially referred to as the “heroin highway” due to its frequent use as a route for drug dealers from the more urbanized areas further to the east selling their product in the more suburban and rural areas of New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and New York State (Svetlana Shkolnikova, 3/11/19, NorthJersey.com). It is is also nearly seventy percent Hispanic, with Colombians, Mexicans, and Puerto Ricans being the most heavily represented subgroups (United States Census Bureau, 2010). The visitors to our truck reflected these demographics, and a language barrier quickly developed as none of us working the truck that day spoke Spanish beyond, “Hola,” and, “Me gusta.” While the others worked on overcoming this and phoned city hall to request a translator, I kept watch over and socialized with the group of children who were playing beside the truck.

“What’s that?” a boy eventually asked in the tone of unbridled curiosity that only four-year-old’s possess, pointing intently at a picture prominently displayed on a poster that we have set up next to the truck.

Hesitating, I made eye contact with his mother, who was standing nearby next the coffee dispenser we had set up. She nodded and gave me a look that said Go ahead, it’s not like it does any good to shelter them from it. So I told him:

“That’s a very bad drug called heroin, which if you use can mess up your life. It becomes the only thing you ever think about. No time for friends or having fun, only more and more of the drug until one day it kills you.”

Much more quietly, he said “That is bad…”

“I know it is, but you’ll be safe as long as you never, ever do it.”

“Okay, good!” He chirped, his former energy restored.

“That’s what I like to hear! Make sure you tell your mother that we’ll be doing a class soon on how to help people who do use it.”

That class I spoke about was about administering Narcan, a nasal spray that can be administered to opioid overdose victims to temporarily stall the fatal symptoms and buy time to get them to an emergency ward. While the class on Narcan is the centerpiece of the Hope One truck’s program, the program also provides information on resources for addicts who desire to quit, such as local rehabilitation centers and recovery hotlines (Morris County Sheriff's Office, 2017). The program was established in 2017 by newly elected County Sheriff James Gannon, who had made combating the opioid epidemic a central plank of his campaign. Its web page describes it as a “unique blend of law enforcement and social services”, wording clearly seeking to differentiate it from the failed hard-line approach of the War on Drugs. Such sentiment is reflected in Gannon’s own statements: “We’re not taking them to jail,” he says of opioid users. “We’re taking them on the road to recovery.” If emulation is any measure of success, then the establishment by several other New Jersey counties of their own Hope One programs speaks volumes (Michael Hill, 4/24/17, NJTV Online).

By the time the Narcan class began, the truck was packed to the brim with eager students. A sheriff’s deputy taught the class, while a local woman who understood English volunteered to

translate the lesson for the listeners, our calls to city hall for assistance having gone unanswered. Bringing out a Narcan kit as well as a plastic mannequin similar to those seen in CPR lessons, the deputy demonstrated the steps necessary to administer the spray by tilting back the dummy’s neck, performing rescue breathing after removing any residue from the mouth, and finally inserting the nozzle up the mannequin’s nostril. After each of the attendees completed a brief questionnaire, they were each provided with a free Narcan kit.

As I watched the attendees file out of the truck, offering up many expressions of gracias, a gnawing, restless sensation flooded over me. Was this enough? The Narcan kits that we handed out would help save lives, but what was being done about despair and hopelessness, the root causes that led people to overdose in the first place? The opioid epidemic should not be treated as a single, discrete issue, but one that interconnects with nearly all others facing America today.

Besides the addictive nature of the substances themselves, poverty, unemployment, and marginalization arguably play just as big a role, as data consistently shows that an individual affected by each of these issues is much more likely to develop an addiction. However, until our leaders wake up to that reality, they will be stuck chipping away around the edges of the problem rather than finding a true solution to it.

Soon, the time came for us to leave. There were other locations for us to visit and more Narcan kits to hand out in one small fragment of a great but troubled nation. 

Works Cited

Data Access and Dissemination Systems (DADS). “American FactFinder - Results.” American FactFinder - Results, 5 Oct. 2010, factfinder.census.gov/faces/tableservices/jsf/pages/productview.xhtml?src=bkmk.

“Morris County Sheriff's Office.” Morris County Sheriff's Office, sheriff.morriscountynj.gov/.

“NJTV.” NJTV, www.njtvonline.org/.

Shkolnikova, Svetlana. “On Route 23, or 'Heroin Highway,' a Growing Suburban Demand for Drugs Meets Urban Supply.” North Jersey, North Jersey Record, 12 Mar. 2019, www.northjersey.com/story/news/crime/2019/03/11/nj-route-23-heroin-highway-%20demand-drugs-meets-urban-supply/2955089002/.