~PaL~ FREEHOLD TOWNSHIP – The tendrils of opiate addiction have spread out from the cities bordering the state, now reaching even in the rural suburbs and exurbs of central New Jersey. The Freehold Township Committee expressed concern that the heroin epidemic plaguing urban areas of Monmouth County is impacting their relatively quiet municipality. “There are one million people nationwide addicted to heroin, and 10 percent of them are in New Jersey,” Committeeman Thomas Cook said. “It’s in every family and in every community.” Freehold Township Town Hall April 2013.JPG Members of the Freehold Township Committee fear that the heroin epidemic plaguing Monmouth County and much of the state has reached their borders. Christopher Robbins / NJ Mayor Barbara McMorrow said Freehold Township’s central location could help bring heroin into the community. “It’s a big concern for us because of where we’re located,” McMorrow said. “We’re right in the traffic lanes.” While McMorrow noted that heroin’s low cost and widespread availability in New Jersey have made it a preferred alternative to Oxycontin and other synthetic opioids among addicts, Deputy Mayor Anthony J. Ammiano said Freehold Township youth could be introduced to the drug from other connections. “It starts with marijuana,” Ammiano said. “We hear a lot about it, but tend to pooh-pooh it because other states have decriminalized it, but it starts with marijuana.” Ammiano, who attended a presentation by Acting Monmouth County Prosecutor Christopher Gramiccioni earlier this week, said the purity of the heroin available in Monmouth County is causing an increase in fatalities. “It is a plague, a plague on our younger generation,” McMorrow said. “We’re going to lose more and more of our young people. We have already been to funerals. Earlier this year, Gramiccioni warned that heroin use had reached epidemic proportions. Since then, he has taken that message to schools and municipalities around the county. Monmouth and Ocean counties now lead the state in hospital admissions from heroin overdose. Statewide, the number of people seeking treatment for heroin addiction has increased, as has the number of overdoses.
Posted on: Wed, 04 Dec 2013 20:20:13 +0000
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