Colorado

In almost one week from today – on Friday July 18th, Harmony Foundation will host a groundbreaking ceremony for our new medical and admissions building.

The Howie Madigan Admissions/Medical Building will be the first of several new buildings slated to improve our 45-acre campus in the Colorado Rocky Mountains. The medical building is made possible by our Support and Renew Capital Campaign. This campaign and our non-profit status allows us to put our excess revenues back into the development of treatment facilities and services for our Colorado rehab center.

As such, we have decided to build a state of the art medical building to help treat those most in need – those requiring intensive medical detoxification. Currently, many of our buildings are 80 years old and can’t be remodeled due to building code restrictions. Our health center is only able to accommodate 7 clients at a time, when many more in the area seek our services. Considering that we are the only detox facility in Larimer County, being able to accommodate more clients is tantamount to living up to our mission to provide the foundation for sustained recovery from drug and alcohol addiction.

Those that require detox are often those addicted to dangerous drugs that have high overdose potential, such as heroin and prescription opiates and benzodiazepines. Unfortunately, our current capacity causes us to have to delay client admission, which is risky for those heavily addicted. By the time bed space becomes available they may have decided against treatment, as the decision to enter treatment is often vulnerable to begin with.

The volume of those seeking detox and addiction treatment for these drugs doesn’t seem to be waning either, as Dot Dorman, our CEO explains, “Regrettably, addiction to drugs and alcohol is not getting better in our society, it is getting worse…We must meet this challenge head-on with state-of-the-art facilities and programs.”
 The new health center will do this by offering 20 detox beds – more than doubling its current capacity.

The groundbreaking ceremony is open to the public and will begin at 10am next Friday on our campus at 1600 Fish Hatchery rd. Estes Park, CO 80517.

Yesterday the New York Times featured an article about the marijuana legalization debate. It covered the arguments on both sides five months after the start of recreational marijuana sales in Colorado. 

Although five months isn’t enough time to see real data, proponents and opponents have discerned some conclusions over whether legalization is helping or harming the state (and surrounding states). The main arguments surfacing – many based off of recent events – are as follows:

Opponents of Legalization

• Hospitals are treating more adults and children after they’ve ingested potent doses of marijuana 
• A Denver man killed his wife after consuming Karma Kandy, a potent marijuana candy 
• A Congolese exchange student starting acting erratically and jumped to his death off of a hotel balcony after eating a marijuana cookie. The Medical Examiner’s Office said marijuana was a “significant” contribution to the accident. 
• The number of stoned drivers coming from CO seems to be on the rise in neighboring states 
• Purchased Marijuana from CO is moving across state lines 
• More kids are using marijuana or accidentally ingesting products that seem kid friendly – i.e. gummy bears, cookies etc. 
• There has been rise in home explosions across the state from people using flammable butane to make hashish oil according to police and fire officials 

Proponents of Legalization 

• Hundreds of thousands of customers have purchased and used marijuana products without negative incidents 
• The marijuana industry has generated over $12 million in taxes and fees to date 
• Violent crimes and overall crime in Denver are down so far this year despite marijuana retailers being in “bad” neighborhoods 

Most of these incidents and anecdotes have limited hard data associated with them. Also, as the article pointed out, because health statistics can take awhile to be published, the impact of marijuana on child or teen drug use, arrests or car accidents may not be known for years.

One notable fact is that Justice Department officials warned that they would intervene in states where marijuana was becoming legalized if it proved to be contributing to violence, trafficking across state lines or directly impacting children. The big question is how many acts of violence, trafficking or incidents involving children will it take for them to intervene? It is also questionable if any real interventions will lag along with gathering and publishing hard data on these events.

For a more in depth look at how legalization has impacted Colorado, please read the article, Colorado’s Landmark Marijuana Experiment: A Journey Into the System Reveals Dangers and Opportunities. This two part article was written by Marvin Ventrell, JD Director of Community and Alumni Relations at Harmony Foundation. He will be speaking on these topics at the National Conference on Addiction Disorders in St. Louis in August.

A few months ago, we wrote about Zohydro – the controversial painkiller approved by the FDA last October. Despite its controversy and attempts to block its release, the opiate hits the market this week. Health care and addiction recovery advocates are still pushing for an appeal, as they fear widespread abuse of the painkiller while opiate abuse has reached epidemic levels in the US.

The controversy over Zohydro lies in the fact that it is a pure hydrocodone drug, without acetaminophen or other drugs added to it, making it 5 times stronger than other popularly abused opiates. In addition, it is crushable when most crushable painkillers were taken off the market a few years ago. Large scale efforts were made to remanufacture opiates like Percocet and OxyContin to make them unable to be crushed, snorted or injected. Zohydro undoes these efforts and puts health care advocates on edge thinking about the eminent widespread abuse and overdose potential of Zohydro. 

Zogenix, the manufacturers behind Zohydro said they plan on releasing a non-crushable version of the opiate but that it would take 3 years before hitting the shelves. Considering prescription opioid deaths have quadrupled since 1999, 3 years is not soon enough.

Given that Zohydro is 5 times stronger than other opiates, “It will kill people as soon as it’s released,” said Dr. Andrew Kolodny who serves as president of Physicians for Responsible Opioid Prescribing. Kolodny adds, “It’s a whopping dose of hydrocodone packed in an easy-to-crush capsule.”

 

Adding to its controversy, many question how such a dangerous drug got approved in the first place when an advisory committee voted against it by 11-2. Questioning this, U.S. senators Joe Manchin (D-WV) and David Vitter (R-LA) have actually started a bribery investigation aimed at an FDA official who they claim accepted money from pharmaceutical companies in exchange for a seat on an FDA advisory panel meeting for Zohydro.

Although necessary, bribery investigations and a 3-year release plan of a non-crushable version of Zohydro will do little to prevent abuse and overdose. That is why Harmony Foundation is unwavering in its efforts in providing the best addiction treatment and relapse prevention services for opiate abusers. We aim to put a dent in the soaring number of overdose deaths from opiates and help clients seeking opiate addition treatment live opiate free.