PORTLAND, Ore. — Kendra Sawyer spoke to her father from the Deschutes County Jail and told him she loved him. Six hours later, in the throes of opioid withdrawal, the 22-year-old took her own life.
A year later, Sawyer’s father, Kent, wonders whether his daughter, troubled as she was, would still be alive if the prison had not provided her with medication to ease the pain of her withdrawal, as he claimed in an interview. recently filed a lawsuit.
“Kendra screamed in pain and cried for hours, and no one did anything,” Sawyer said. “No one really deserves to die a painful death.”
Oregon prisons could soon see a rise in the number of inmates struggling with opioid addiction, like Kendra, if efforts this legislative session are successful to roll back Measure 110, the state’s first law to decriminalize drugs that require possession legalizes drugs. quantities of illegal drugs such as heroin for “personal use”. In response, state lawmakers from both parties are pushing for more funding for medications used to treat opioid addiction in prisons.
The measure, which was passed by voters in 2020, has come under fire as Oregon grapples with a fentanyl crisis that has led to one of the largest spikes in overdose deaths in the country. Revising it is a top priority during this year’s legislature.
The latest proposal would allow prisons that want to establish or expand medication treatment programs to apply for grants from a $10 million fund. It has bipartisan support and the backing of public health advocates and some in law enforcement.
“This is a policy that puts politics aside and is really about what prisons need to care for people,” said Democratic state Rep. Pam Marsh, who authored the measure. “If we are serious about providing treatment to people, this is a clear gap that needs to be filled.”
In Lincoln County, for example, the jail currently spends nearly $50,000 a month — or more than $1,600 per dose — on addiction medications for 30 inmates, Marie Gainer, the corrections sergeant who oversees the program, said in an email. The prison program on Oregon’s rural Pacific coast, about 130 miles southwest of Portland, handled 91 inmates last year, she said.
Advocates of prison treatment programs say they save lives by allowing people to continue or begin their recovery while in prison.
Roughly 60% of people in U.S. prisons have substance abuse problems, federal data show, and overdoses are a leading cause of death for newly released people, in part because their tolerance decreases when they don’t use behind bars.
Yet just under a quarter of jails provide opioid addiction medications to people who had a prescription before incarceration, and even fewer (19%) provide treatment to people without prior prescriptions, according to the most recent federal data from the 2019 Census of Jails .
However, courts have recently ruled that withholding addiction treatment medications from inmates with prior prescriptions violates federal law, and more states and local counties have taken steps to expand access.
In Washington state, for example, lawmakers want to spend an additional $7.4 million on the issue, on top of the $7.5 million already approved in last year’s biennial budget. Part of the proposed boost would come from opioid settlement funds, a month after the attorney general announced a nearly $150 million settlement with drugmaker Johnson. & Johnson. If passed by the Legislature, the additional funding would double the number of prisons where medications are provided, from 19 to 38, Gov. Jay Inslee’s office said in an email.
Other states — including New York, Vermont, Maryland and Utah — have passed laws requiring prisons to provide opioid use disorder medication to people who were already on medication when they were incarcerated.
When Utah’s law took effect last May, Colin Conner, who had struggled with opioid addiction for years, had already been in a Salt Lake City jail for nearly two months. At that point, the prison had already stopped using methadone, which he had been prescribed before his arrest, his father said.
Cut off from his medication, Colin went through a painful withdrawal, Jon Tyler Conner said. His cravings returned and his tolerance to medications decreased. Just days after his release last June, he died of a fentanyl overdose at the age of 32.
“If they had treated him as they should have done by law, he would have been on methadone. He wouldn’t have died,” said Conner, who lives in Seattle.
The Salt Lake County Sheriff’s Office said in an emailed statement that it could not comment “due to the potential threat of litigation.”
In Oregon, Sawyer filed a federal lawsuit against Deschutes County alleging wrongful death and negligence in the death of his daughter Kendra. It accused the province of failing to treat her physical and mental health problems. According to the complaint, records were available to intake officers during her booking that included information about Kendra previously attempting suicide.
Sawyer’s attorney, Ryan Dreveskracht, said he is still waiting for Kendra’s medical records but has seen no evidence that she was given withdrawal medications.
Deschutes County “disagrees with the allegations in the complaint and intends to vigorously defend the lawsuit,” county attorney David Doyle said in an email.
Prisons in other states have had success offering opioid addiction medications behind bars.
Since 2018, New York’s Saratoga County Jail has provided such medications to inmates who had prescriptions at booking, and in 2020 the jail began administering them to people without prior prescriptions who were identified during intake screening as having a had opioid addiction.
Ben Deeb, who oversees the program, said participants have had a 16% recidivism rate since its inception.
“That proves that when you give people the medications they need, you provide the education, trauma therapy and peer support they need … they succeed,” he said. “This should be what corrections look like.”
States have a key role to play in boosting funding for such treatments in prisons, which are often overlooked, said Jonathan Larsen, legal program manager at the Center for Public Health Research at Temple University in Philadelphia.
“At the end of the day, we already know how to handle this,” he said.
In Oregon, Sawyer knows his lawsuit won’t bring Kendra back. But he hopes his daughter’s story will spark change and raise awareness.
“A little more action can save many more lives,” he said.
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Associated Press writer Hallie Golden in Seattle contributed to this report.