Opioid Crises Takes Center Stage at 13 Annual H.F. Guggenheim Symposium
She walked up to the mic to the side of the small stage and modestly remarked that she had no idea why she had been invited to the event.
Someone knew what they were doing because by the time the session ended, Cheri Walter, without a teleprompter or written notes in front of her, had delivered an informative but blunt and moving presentation worthy of any Tony Award-winning performance taking place on a Broadway stage not far from where she spoke.
So, too, Joe Rannazzisi, a former top DEA supervisor turned whistleblower who exposed how the pharmaceutical industry, with the help of Congress and lobbyists, actually worsened the opioid crisis and disrupted the federal agency’s ability to go after “drug dealers in lab coats,” as he once described it.
Walter, who heads Ohio’s Association of County Behavioral Health Authorities, a nonprofit, was among the panelists in the 13th annual two-day conference held by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice’s Center on Media, Crime and Justice.
The event, sponsored by the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation, brings together cops, prosecutors, journalists like yours truly, academics, public health professionals and others to discuss crime-related trends. The theme this year? “Justice in the Heartland,” with the opiate crisis as the focus of two panels.
What she and Rannazzisi shared about a substance abuse epidemic that has taken more lives annually in recent years than gun violence, motor vehicle crashes and the HIV crisis at its peak should resonate here and nationally.
Walter knows this issue personally and professionally. She has been in recovery for 36 years. Her mother was a longtime prescription pill addict who died at the age of 86.
Ohio in 2016 recorded the most drug-related overdose deaths of any state, mostly from heroin or opiates — 4,149...