CRIME / COURTS

Major anti-heroin effort coming to Louisville

Matthew Glowicki, and Beth Warren
The Courier-Journal

Federal and city officials Wednesday said that Louisville will become a pilot city in an initiative to tackle the heroin and opioid crisis and that a local task force is being created to target dealers linked to overdoses.

The program, which will be led by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, is dubbed the "DEA 360 Strategy" and is already in place in Pittsburgh, St. Louis and Milwaukee.

"We are not targeting heroin addicts," said U.S. Attorney John Kuhn said during a press conference announcing the DEA 360 Strategy to combat heroin. "I have a message for heroin dealers. You are killing people in this city from every walk of life. From this point forward, if you sell join that causes an overdose, we will bring federal charges against you that will get you a minimum of 20 years in prison with no parole. The trafficking in this deadly poison must end."

The newly formed Heroin Investigation Team of Louisville Metro Police narcotics detectives and DEA special agents will investigate heroin overdoses as crime scenes.

"I have a message for heroin dealers," said John E. Kuhn Jr., the U.S. attorney for the Western District of Kentucky, in a written statement. "You are killing people in this city from every walk of life. From this point forward, if you sell heroin that causes an overdose, we will bring federal charges against you that will get you a minimum of 20 years in prison with no parole."

Federal funds will pay for overtime for six Louisville Metro Police detectives to join the task force, which is charged with investigating overdoses ending in death or serious injury. Federal prosecution could lead to the mandatory 20-year sentences for dealers.

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The announcement comes amid a deadly epidemic in Louisville. Jefferson County had more drug overdose deaths overall last year than any other Kentucky county – 268 – and also led the state in heroin-related deaths, with 131.

The federal program includes a game plan for tracking local drug dealers and larger suppliers and securing longer prison sentences as well as tracking doctors at the center of pill mills. Kuhn, the top federal prosecutor in western Kentucky, and Timothy J. Plancon, Special Agent-in-Charge of the DEA's Detroit field division – which includes Louisville – revealed more details Wednesday afternoon in the news conference.

Mayor Greg Fischer, Louisville Metro Police Chief Steve Conrad and Dr. Toni Ganzel, dean of the University of Louisville School of Medicine, are going to speak at the briefing, which should also include representatives from the substance abuse prevention and treatment communities.

The plan, which Plancon said was designed to use a "holistic approach," also addresses the need to better educate the public on the dangers of pain pill reliance.

The strategy is designed to:

» Coordinate law enforcement operations to target all levels of drug trafficking organizations that spread heroin and illegal pills to Louisville neighborhoods.

» Promote diversion control by increasing awareness of patients, doctors, pharmacists, wholesalers and drug manufacturers to the dangers of opioid painkiller addiction, which can progress to a heroin addiction.

» Foster community outreach by partnering with medical professionals, governmental and community service organizations that can provide long-term help, education support to residents.

Pittsburgh was the first to implement the 360 Strategy.

"Targeting high-level drug traffickers, both domestic and abroad, is always going to be a primary mission, but we can't arrest our way out of it," said DEA Special Agent Patrick J. Trainor, spokesman for the administration's Philadelphia Division, which includes Pittsburgh.

Since launching the program in November, agents there have teamed with a local theater company to put on a play attended by hundreds of students. It focuses on the dangers of experimenting with pills and other drugs.

“Who would think the DEA would be putting on plays, but it works," he said. "It’s effective in getting the word out.

"We're ramping up awareness like never before."

Agents also have cautioned doctors about the dangers of overprescribing and urged parents to monitor what their children are given for pain.

They've also appealed to pharmacists to watch for signs of rogue doctors or pill mills.

“They are under no obligation to fill a prescription they think is false or fake,” Trainor said.

“Often they are aware of the bad doctors well before we are.”

Addiction is an entrenched problem in Kentucky, where painkiller and heroin abuse is rampant.

Statistics from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ranked the state’s drug overdose death rate fourth-highest in the nation in 2014, the latest year for which comparable data is available. And in 2015, overdose deaths rose even higher, to 1,248 across the commonwealth, a state report says. The epidemic affects not only users but also their parents and children – including a steadily-increasing number of infants born dependent on drugs.

►RELATED: Fears grow as heroin seeps into Appalachia

►MORE READING: Heroin's grip: Epidemic scars generation of kids

Increasingly, heroin is being laced with fentanyl, a deadly and powerful synthetic drug. Doctors and treatment professionals worry that carfentanil, an even more powerful drug found in nearby Ohio, may soon make its way to Kentucky as well.

The Courier-Journal’s extensive coverage of the prescription pill abuse and heroin epidemic began years ago, including a public forum at Bellarmine University in July attended by more than 400 residents. More information is available on Heroin: A Way Forward: http://www.courier-journal.com/topic/cj-heroin.

Reporter Beth Warren can be reached at 502-582-7164 or bwarren@courier-journal.com. Reporter Matthew Glowicki can be reached at 502-582-4989 or mglowicki@courier-journal.com. Reporter Laura Ungar contributed to this story.