When Director of the Lancaster County Drug and Alcohol Commission, Rick Kastner, appeared before the Commissioners for routine business, Tuesday morning, he brought with him some eye-opening statistics about the prevalence of substance addition right here in Lancaster County.
An amended agreement up for a vote by the Commissioners on Wednesday involves increasing the amount of funding available to a program that enables heroin addicts to obtain the drug Buprenorphine, which, like methadone, helps curb their cravings.
“How many heroin addicts would you say we have here in Lancaster County?” asked Commissioner Scott Martin.
“Probably three or four thousand,” replied Kastner.
Kastner said that heroin is relatively easy to obtain in Lancaster because of our proximity to major hubs of drug trafficking activity, including Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York.
He also revealed that “70% or more of people sitting in the County Prison are either addicts or alcoholics.”
“They’re going to end up somewhere,” he continued.”They’ll either end up at the prison or in treatment or in the hospitals…”
“So they don’t go away if we don’t treat them,” Kastner concluded.
