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The city of Brooklyn Center is looking at ways to combat the opioid crisis, an issue that officials say has hit the city especially hard.
“Opioids now with the addition of fentanyl is wreaking havoc on our community in so many ways,” said LaToya Turk, the city’s director of Community Prevention, Health and Safety.
City officials say Brooklyn Center has one of the highest rates of opioid overdoses in the state.
City statistics revealed at Monday’s City Council meeting show Brooklyn Center had 13 opioid-related deaths in 2021 and 12 more deaths in 2022.
Turk said the city is working on a plan to save lives.
That plan includes working with businesses and their employees.
“Our business owners were locking their bathrooms, their bathrooms weren’t accessible because they were having problems with drug use in their bathrooms,” said Turk, referring to the business district located across from the Brooklyn Center Transit Center.
Turk said it’s the city’s goal is to train one business staff member per shift to administer Narcan or naloxone, the opioid antidote drugs.
In addition, Turk said the city has worked closely with Brooklyn Center High School. Turk said the city trained school staff and more than 100 students to administer Narcan and naloxone.
The city is also working on other ways to make help more accessible.
“You have a very short window if someone says they want help,” said Turk. “A lot of times getting them to a facility, talking to the right person is crucial, so to set up a location where someone is in that moment saying ‘I want help,’ to have an on-site peer recovery or on-call peer recovery specialist where they can tap into right away.”
The city recently began receiving funds as a part of a national settlement with drug and pharmaceutical companies.
Over the next 14 years, Brooklyn Center is expected to receive a total of just over $530,000 to fund opioid initiatives.
SOURCE: CCX MEDIA
