rest area near me kentucky louisville kentucky

I’d like to say we did a great job in law enforcement and drove them out, but what happened is the cartels’ business model changed. The readers of the Herald-Leader aren’t seeing those stories about kids in the University of Kentucky pediatric center at Chandler Hospital who have been exposed to clandestine meth labs. I wish he had talked more about the stuff that’s coming over that porous border because the dope that’s going in our kids’ arms, whether it’s a methamphetamine or the fentanyl, we don’t produce it here anymore. I know that became, for some, a divisive issue. The president I served, President Trump, talked a lot about the people and immigration. And I talk about the border because that’s one component that the AG needs to be joined arms and engaging in Washington, D.C., because until we secure that border. Whether we’re talking about this poison that’s coming from over a porous Southwest border - we are a border state. I can tell you, it keeps me awake at night, thinking about my three kids. Prosecutors across the commonwealth are dealing with cases right now where a single pill took our sons and daughters, so we have no margin of error. The United States Attorney’s Office, when I was U.S. One pill can take our sons and our daughters.

We’re seeing some creative approaches and they’re continuing to build out their infrastructure and how they treat.īut what I mentioned in the Capitol Rotunda, and the thrust of your question, is that other leg of the stool and that’s prevention, because we are failing in prevention. From Volunteers of America here in Louisville, to ARC, Addiction Recovery Care, is doing a great job. That’s leveraging punishment to get a good outcome. It is a long process, but you will get some great outcomes. Our drug court program has seen some great outcomes from that. We have to incentivize, at times, users to seek treatment, and the criminal justice system can be used to incentivize that. It plays a role in so many offenses in some degree. Their entire docket, the criminal docket, seems to be driven by the drug epidemic. I was with a commonwealth’s attorney last night that shared some of her statistics. They oftentimes feel like they’re on an island. The way that the AG as a force multiplier could have an impact on it is working through our county and commonwealth’s attorneys. It’s who Kentuckians are electing in that role. It’s your county and commonwealth’s attorneys. It’s not the AG, and it’s not the United States Attorney, the job I used to have.

When I talk about the drug epidemic, how could the attorney general sitting in Frankfort impact that? It is working through the most important prosecutors to your readers and the people of this commonwealth. But we’re still looking at 2,200 empty seats in pews, empty seats at kitchen tables. Thanks to Narcan, we’ve driven some of those down. The vast majority of those fatalities are driven by fentanyl. The fentanyl that we’re seeing pouring in, which is driving those overdoses, those almost 2,200 overdose deaths last year. We have a drug epidemic in the state, from the methamphetamine that we see pouring into the commonwealth, that is in some regions the primary drug of choice and the primary threat.

Russell Coleman: I’m hesitant to ever say the term “opioid epidemic” because we don’t have just an opioid epidemic. What does that look like from a law enforcement and prosecutorial perspective? Herald-Leader: You had a press conference a week after the election and identified combating the drug epidemic as a top priority.

Rest area near me kentucky louisville kentucky