Lexington County is applying for more than $2 million in government assistance funds to address an “opioid epidemic” in Lexington County.

At its regularly scheduled Aug. 8 meeting, Lexington County Council approved a submission of the request to a state opioid recovery program enacted by Gov. Henry McMaster in May 2022.

County Council Member Darrell Hudson said the problem is not just in Lexington County but throughout South Carolina, and throughout the nation.

“People don’t want to talk about it,” Hudson said in an interview with the Chronicle after the meeting.

He compared it to prevailing attitudes toward alcoholism.

Hudson said more million-dollar requests will be made during the next 10 years to address the problem. Funds identified for the mission are specified in the S.C. Opioid Recovery Plan.

Much of the funding coming to South Carolina and other states is sourced by legal settlements brought against large pharmaceutical providers.

Council received the request in a memorandum from the county administrator. Documents contained in the requests confirm a continuing problem with opioid addiction and overdose in Lexington County. There has been a 100% increase in emergency medical response to opioid-related visits over the past 10 years. Since 2021, there have been 239 emergency responses related to opioids.

In 2022, some 57 deaths were attributed to opioids in Lexington County. The documents listed 46 deaths in 2021 and 39 in 2020.

Several different Lexington County agencies have signed up to deal with the problem and requested funds to accomplish different goals. The following agencies’ funding requests were identified in county documents: Lexington County Fire Service ($200,000); Lexington County EMS ($200,000); Lexington County Sheriff’s Department ($200,000); Lexington County Coroner’s Office, $75,000); 11th Circuit Solicitor’s Office ($336,643); The Courage Center ($1,347,554).

Lexington’s Courage Center, the Midlands’ first recovery community organization supporting youth 14-26 struggling with substance abuse and their family members, is operated as a nonprofit and provides a variety of treatment programs for people suffering from drug addiction. It also has a medical staff available.

The county-wide strategies to deal with the problem include creating awareness throughout the Lexington community of the presence of the opioid impact and providing the medical assistance and drugs needed for treatment. The plan also calls for expanded law enforcement training to deal with opioid overdose problems.

According to the paperwork distributed to council, communities in the county need to “recognize addiction as a chronic disease.”

The request for state funds comes as local groups continue to seek ways to curb escalating overdose numbers in the county and the Midlands at large.

LRADAC, the alcohol and drug abuse authority that serves the counties of Lexington and Richland, recently installed a Narcan vending machine at the county Detention Center, dispensing free doses of the opioid reversal drug to recently released inmates. 

Earlier this year, The Courage Center secured more funding for its CORE program, a post-overdose outreach effort that provides local EMS with resource cards and a prepaid cell phone to give to overdose survivors after receiving Narcan, so they can be contacted by a recovery coach and receive access to services.

Dr. Pam Imm is a community psychologist who works with LRADAC and serves as board chair for The Courage Center. She emphasized the need to address overdose issues in the area in an interview with the Chronicle earlier this year.

“2018, we had 60 overdoses. 2020, we had 100. 2021, we had 103. And 2022, we had 115,” she said, charting the trend of overdose deaths in Lexington County. “Nothing’s getting better here.”