Write to Solano County’s Board of Supervisors today (or call in tomorrow) to keep the Alcohol & Drugs Advisory Board active

By Ramón Castellblanch, April 30, 2023.

Solano is at a critical moment in addressing our opioid epidemic.  Its toll has been steadily rising for years.  According to the state opioid dashboard, in the second quarter of 2018, there were five opioid OD deaths annually per 100,000 residents; by the second quarter of last year, it was 22/ 100,000.  Benicia’s rate is no exception, as our second quarter of 2022 annual opioid OD death rate was 14/ 100,000.

The County Board of Supervisors established the Alcohol & Drug Advisory Board (ADAB), “to assure we address drug and alcohol misuse through prevention, treatment and recovery.”  The policy of the Board requires the ADAB to meet at least 6 times/ year and it has done so for many years with facilities provided by the County official in charge of its opioid use disorder (OUD) treatment programs.

In 2019, Drug Safe Solano, our county’s opioid safety coalition, effectively urged the County to become a plaintiff to the national opioids lawsuit.  Last September, the County official in charge of OUD treatment, called the Substance Abuse Administrator (SAA), advised the ADAB that the Solano was about to start receiving its share of the National Opioids Settlement and she asked it for recommendations on spending those funds.  The ADAB was told it would be in the order of $400,000/ year for each of the next 18 years.  The documents found under National Opioids Settlement website explain the money is to target opioid remediation and list OUD treatment at the top of its opioid remediation list.  A settlement documents also indicate that Fairfield, Vallejo, & Vacaville may receive substantial settlement funds.

The ADAB was told [Solano’s] share of the National Opioids Settlement] would be in the order of $400,000/ year for each of the next 18 years.

Solano hospitals now have recently-hired staff with the most first-hand data on needed OUD treatments. Starting a year or two ago, our emergency departments began using substance use navigators (SUNs), staff specifically assigned to find treatment and recovery services for emergency department opioid OD survivors.  As a first step to treatment, SUNs can help OD survivors get medication assisted treatment (MAT).  MAT helps relieve withdrawal symptoms.   The SUNs not only have first-hand knowledge of treatment needs, they are contributing to a statewide database tracking opioid ODs and MAT starts.  Two of the ADAB’s four members are now SUNs and there were six other people with knowledge of the opioid epidemic and treatment seeking appointment to it.

Using the SUNs’ skills in particular, the ADAB was working on a set of OUD treatment measures toward which the County could direct its opioid settlement funds.  It had discussed peer support training to address the OUD treatment staffing shortage.  It had investigated an internet connection of local programs treating people with OUD to better coordinate their services.  It was researching meeting Solano’s need for sober living environments.

The acting Substance Abuse Administrator argued that [a] letter gave her the authority to override the full Board’s meeting policy for the ADAB.  This action was never discussed by the Board nor even known to all of its members.

But, in February, the acting SAA shut off the ADAB access to the County’s meeting facilities; in this case, its online meeting site.  She gotten a letter from two supervisors, Monica Brown and John Vasquez, noting that the previous June, they’d been asked to consider terminating County boards like the ADAB.  The acting SAA argued that the letter gave her the authority to override the full Board’s meeting policy for the ADAB.  This action was never discussed by the Board nor even known to all of its members.

At the May 2 Board of Supervisors’ meeting, the acting SAA will recommend that the ADAB be eliminated. She will evaluate its activities without having attended any ADAB meeting since the SAA left or having had any discussion with the ADAB.   She will argue that the Mental Health Advisory Board can fill its role although there’s nothing in the recent MHAB minutes to indicate that they’ve discussed the opioid epidemic or its remedies at all.

Meantime, the acting SAA has apparently formed a closed opioid settlement workgroup made up of County staff and people they selected to plan County use of its settlement money.  If she thought that the MHAB could handle such topics, it’s not clear why she’d form a separate body for that purpose.  The closed workgroup process may fail to produce allocations most effective at saving lives from Solano’s opioid epidemic.  It could even provide favors to some involved or be used to backfill unrelated County spending.

We need to get the ADAB back on track so that its SUNs and members of the community most knowledgeable about uses of the County’s opioid settlement funds can discuss it in the light of day […] and save the most Solano lives.

At least a half dozen residents with experience in opioid use disorder treatment will be testifying at the May 2 Board of Supervisors meeting when it comes up on the agenda.  We need to get the ADAB back on track so that its SUNs and members of the community most knowledgeable about uses of the County’s opioid settlement funds can discuss it in the light of day.  Thus, it can help assure that its national opioid settlement spending is most effectively used to comply with the settlement’s terms and save the most Solano lives.