October 2022
CARTER COUNTY CONNECTS |
|
|
|
|
|
We were extremely honored to be selected as one of the STRONG ACC's 2022 Resilience Award Winners. We are so grateful for the STRONG ACC Resilience Awards Committee and the full STRONG ACC for their support and efforts throughout the region. |
|
October Outstanding Coalition Member:
Valentina Escobar Gonzalez
Valentina shared:
Why is Carter County Drug Prevention important to you and/or our community?
Because it makes a difference in the lives of our neighbors and their families.
What is your favorite memory, moment, event or partnership with Carter County Drug Prevention?
When we worked together during the lock downs in 2020 to help promote this great organization with social media marketing to the mass with staff training.
We are grateful for the work Valentina does both personally and professionally in our community.
|
|
|---|
|
Our outstanding partner for the month of October is one of our amazing business partners, MC Professional Cleaning Solutions.
Macey Cole and her team do an amazing job of keeping our offices clean (and, trust us, our programs are A LOT to clean up after!)
Macey says:
Carter County Drug Prevention is important to Carter County, as well as to my family, because they devote so much to our community. So many people may not realize that everyday they put in countless, long hours to better our community.
As a mother and a business owner, I am honored to partner with Carter County Drug Prevention and I look forward to seeing all the great things they will do in the future.
We are so grateful for Macey and the many hours she spends taking care of CCDP every week.
|
|
|
|
|
 |
Hello coalition members,
Thanks for all you do to help us make Carter County a healthier place to live!
September 2022 highlights include:
- Shout out to STRONG ACC for allowing us to share at their STRONG Kids forum.
- Our Marijuana Prevention Coordinator, Tia, Board Member, Kelly Kitchens, youth coalition members, Rylee and Carter traveled to Phoenix, AZ for the National Recreation and Parks Association Conference. Kelly, Rylee and I presented alongside NRPA staff about our mentorship program and it was a great experience!
- Proclamations recognizing September as National Recovery Month and Suicide Prevention Awareness Month were approved by both the City Mayor, Curt Alexander and County Mayor, Patty Woodby. We are so grateful that our local government sees value in observing these important observances.
- Nash hosted Family Game Nights, participated in Relay for Life and a Health Fair at Elizabethton Senior Center and Carter County Schools' Community Adolescent Mental Health Forum.
- Brittny particpated in the ETSU College of Public Health Networking Night.
- Tia took resources and activities for kids to Healing Appalachia alongside Recovery Resources.
I am consistently impressed with our staff and the connections they make in our community and beyond. Check out pictures of these events below!
Thanks for supporting CCDP. We could not make any of the impacts we do without YOU!
|
|
|---|
|
|
September Youth Coalition Updates:
- First meeting for the year on September 15th- created posters for the Recovery Walk!
- Helped our favorites at Elizabethon Parks & Rec with the Covered Bridge Festival.
- Supported our partner, Appalachian Banner Academy by participating in their Annual Wiffle Ball Tournament.
- All youth in 4th-12th grades with lived experience with or passion for drug prevention in Carter County are invited to be part of the youth coalition. Check out the schedule here!
|
|
|---|
|
|
October CCC Meeting
October 6th
Virtual: Join Zoom @ 12pm
Meeting will end @ 1:30pm
Things to do before the meeting:
- Please make sure you have filled out this membership form.
- Please use this form to share any upcoming events or activities you would like the collaborative members to know about.
- Committee chairs, please use this form to submit committee progress.
Speakers:
Caroline Rodriguez, TN Voices
&
ETSU Behavioral Health Clinic
Committees will meet in breakout rooms following the speaker.
|
|
|---|
|
|
 |
September 2022 Arrest Data
*Data Provided by Carter County Sheriff's Department & Elizabethton Police Department through https://carter-911-tn.zuercherportal.com/#/inmates.
Ages
12-21 - 0
22-30 - 1
31-40 - 5
41-50 - 2
51-60 - 1
61-70 - 0
71 and up - 0
Unknown ages - 0
Gender
Male - 7
Female - 4
Violations
DUI - 1
Public Intoxication - 1
Underage Consumption - 0
Sale to Minors or Intoxicated Persons- 0
Drug Paraphernalia - 2
Violation of Implied Conscent Law - 1
Manufacture, Delivery, Sale or Possession of Methamphetamine - 8
Maintaining a Dwelling - 0
Introduction of Contraband into a Penal Institution - 0
Possession of Legend Drug without a Prescription - 0
Simple Possession/Casual Exchange - 3
Falsification of Drug Test - 0
Open Conainer - 0
Contributing to the Deliquency of a Minor - 0
Schedule I - 0
Schedule II - 0
Schedule III - 1
Schedule IV - 1
Schedule V - 0
Schedule VI - 0
9-1-1 Calls For Service
DUI - 12
Possible Drugs - 8
Overdose/Poisoning - 3
Public Intoxication - 2
Suicide/Attempt/Threat - 9
Psychiatric/ Abnormal Behavior/ Suicide Attempt - 1 |
|
|
|
|
Tennessee Tobacco QuitLine Enrollment by County
01Jun2022 - 31Aug2022
County Enrollment SFY 2022 Avg. Enrollment per Quarter
ANDERSON 12 11.25
BEDFORD 11 6.25
BENTON 7 2.5
BLEDSOE 3 1.25
BLOUNT 22 15.25
BRADLEY 10 10.5
CAMPBELL 5 4
CANNON 0 1
CARROLL 4 5.75
CARTER 4 6.25
CHEATHAM 2 4
CHESTER 2 0.75
CLAIBORNE 7 3
CLAY 1 0.75
COCKE 7 5.25
COFFEE 14 7
CROCKETT 0 2
CUMBERLAND 9 9.5
DAVIDSON 80 77.5
DECATUR 7 1.75
DEKALB 6 4.5
DICKSON 12 8.5
DYER 4 4.25
FAYETTE 4 2
FENTRESS 3 1.25
FRANKLIN 5 4.75
GIBSON 7 8.5
GILES 5 3.5
GRAINGER 1 3.5
GREENE 15 11
GRUNDY 3 2
HAMBLEN 13 6.5
HAMILTON 43 40.25
HANCOCK 2 2
HARDEMAN 3 3.25
HARDIN 3 2.5
HAWKINS 6 5.25
HAYWOOD 5 4.75
HENDERSON 4 3.75
HENRY 8 7.25
HICKMAN 6 2.75
HOUSTON 1 1
HUMPHREYS 1 1.75
JACKSON 1 2
JEFFERSON 6 6.75
JOHNSON 4 3.25
KNOX 51 41.25
LAKE 1 1.75
LAUDERDALE 6 4
LAWRENCE 10 5.75
LEWIS 4 2
LINCOLN 8 4
LOUDON 5 4
MACON 4 2.5
MADISON 13 14
MARION 5 3.25
MARSHALL 8 7.25
MAURY 15 11.25
MCMINN 10 7.75
MCNAIRY 8 6.5
MEIGS 5 1.75
MONROE 9 5.25
MONTGOMERY 16 16.5
MOORE 0 0.5
MORGAN 2 1.5
OBION 4 7.75
OVERTON 3 4.25
PERRY 0 1
PICKETT 0 0.25
POLK 0 1.75
PUTNAM 11 8.25
RHEA 4 4
ROANE 8 6.75
ROBERTSON 6 3.5
RUTHERFORD 38 30.5
SCOTT 1 1.5
SEQUATCHIE 0 2
SEVIER 15 8.75
SHELBY 122 101
SMITH 1 2.5
STEWART 3 1.75
SULLIVAN 19 16
SUMNER 17 14.5
TIPTON 7 5.5
TROUSDALE 4 0.5
UNICOI 4 1.25
UNION 4 1.75
VAN BUREN 1 1.75
WARREN 15 12.5
WASHINGTON 17 15.5
WAYNE 1 0.75
WEAKLEY 1 3
WHITE 5 3.5
WILLIAMSON 4 7.5
WILSON 19 10.75 |
|
Tobacco Enforcement Summary (Ref # 2366)
For facilities inspected between 7/1/2022 and 9/30/2022
Carter County
No Buys
Carter County 4 facilities visited 0.61%
Establishment
DISCOUNT TOBACCO-REDI MART #3
JIMMY'S #21
TOBACCO DEPOT
VOLUNTEER MART |
|
 |
How Weed Became the New OxyContin
Big Pharma and Big Tobacco are helping market high-potency, psychosis-inducing THC products as your mother’s ‘medical marijuana’
LEIGHTON WOODHOUSE
For 30 years, Dr. Libby Stuyt, a recently retired addiction psychiatrist in Pueblo, Colorado, treated patients with severe drug dependency. Typically, that meant alcohol, heroin, and methamphetamines. But about five years ago, she began to see something new.
“I started seeing people with the worst psychosis symptoms that I have ever seen,” she told me. “And the worst delusions I have ever seen.”
These cases were even more acute than what she’d seen from psychotic patients on meth. Some of the delusions were accompanied by “severe violence.” But these patients were coming up positive only for cannabis.
Stuyt wasn’t alone: Health care professionals throughout Colorado and all over the country were seeing similar episodes.
Ben Cort, who runs an addiction recovery center in Steamboat Springs, Colorado, watched a young man jump up on the table in the emergency department and strip naked, claiming he was the God of thunder and threatening to kill everyone in the room, including two police officers. A collegiate athlete Cort worked with also had a psychotic episode and was shot five times by the police with a beanbag gun before he was subdued. In Los Angeles County, Blue Stohr, a psychiatric social worker, had a patient who climbed a 700-foot crane and considered jumping off of it, not because he was suicidal but because he thought he was in a computer simulation, like
The Matrix.
Those patients, too, were high only on cannabis.
In 2012, Colorado legalized marijuana. In the decade since, 18 other states have followed suit. As billions of dollars have flowed into the new above-ground industry of smokable, edible, and drinkable cannabis-based products, the drug has been transformed into something unrecognizable to anyone who grew up around marijuana pre-legalization. Addiction medicine doctors and relatives of addicts say it has become a hardcore drug, like cocaine or methamphetamines. Chronic use leads to the same outcomes commonly associated with those harder substances: overdose, psychosis, suicidality. And yet it’s been marketed as a kind of elixir and sold like candy for grown-ups.
“I got into addiction medicine because of the opioid crisis,” said Dr. Roneet Lev, an addiction medicine doctor in San Diego who hosts a podcast about drug abuse. Years ago, she advocated against the over prescription of opioid painkillers like OxyContin. Now, she believes she’s seeing the same thing all over again: the specious claims of medical benefits, the denial of adverse effects. “From Big Tobacco to Big Pharma to Big Marijuana—it’s the same people, and the same pattern.”
Prior to legalization, marijuana plants were bred to produce higher and higher concentrations of THC, a naturally occurring chemical compound in the plant that induces euphoria and alters users’ perceptions of reality. In the 1960s, the stuff the hippies were smoking was less than 2% THC. By the ’90s, it was closer to 5%. By 2015, it was over 20%. “It’s a freak plant that resembles nothing of what has existed in nature,” said Laura Stack, a public speaker who has advocated against the industry since her son, Johnny, killed himself three years ago at 19 years old after years of cannabis abuse drove him into psychosis.
In the era of legalized weed, the drug you think of as “cannabis” can hardly be called marijuana at all. The kinds of cannabis products that are sold online and at dispensaries contain no actual plant matter. They’re made by putting pulverized marijuana into a tube and running butane, propane, ethanol, or carbon dioxide through it, which separates the THC from the rest of the plant. The end product is a wax that can be 70% to 80% THC. That wax can then be put in a vacuum oven and further concentrated into oils that are as much as 95% or even 99% THC. Known as “dabs,” this is what people put in their vape pens, and in states like California and Colorado it’s totally legal and easily available to children. “There are no caps on potency,” said Stack.
If you’re over 30 years old and you used to smoke weed when you were a teenager, the strongest you were smoking was probably 20% THC. Today, teenagers are “dabbing” a product that’s three, four, or five times stronger, and are often doing so multiple times a day. At that level of potency, the impact of the drug on a user’s brain belongs to an entirely different category of risk than smoking a joint or taking a bong rip of even an intensively bred marijuana flower. It’s highly addictive, and over time, there’s a significant chance it can drive you insane.
If you’ve ever smoked a bowl and become irrationally anxious that everyone is staring at you and knows you’re high, what you experienced was a mild symptom of cannabis-induced psychosis. According to one study, about 40% of people react this way. If you experience that paranoia and keep smoking on a regular basis nonetheless—especially with today’s high-potency THC products, and especially if you’re young—there’s a good chance you’ll eventually suffer a full psychotic break; 35% of young people who experience psychotic symptoms, according to another study, eventually have such an episode. If you keep using after that, you run a decent risk of ending up permanently schizophrenic or bipolar. Cannabis has by far the highest conversion rate to schizophrenia of any substance—higher than meth, higher than opioids, higher than LSD. Two Danish studies, as well as a massive study from Finland, put your chances at close to 50%
|
|
|---|
|
|
Nicotine acts in the brain by stimulating the adrenal glands to release the hormone epinephrine (adrenaline) and by increasing levels of the chemical messenger dopamine.
Source: https://nida.nih.gov/publications/drugfacts/cigarettes-other-tobacco-products#:~:text=chemical%20messenger%20dopamine.-,Tobacco%20smoking%20can%20lead%20to%20lung%20cancer%2C%20chronic%20bronchitis%2C%20and,of%20cancer%2C%20especially%20mouth%20cancers.
|
|
|---|
|
|
11 Disorders or Diseases Caused by Alcohol
High blood pressure, heart disease, stroke, liver disease, and digestive problems. Cancer of the breast, mouth, throat, esophagus, voice box, liver, colon, and rectum. Weakening of the immune system, increasing the chances of getting sick. Learning and memory problems, including dementia and poor school performance.
Source: https://www.cdc.gov/alcohol/fact-sheets/alcohol-use.htm#:~:text=High%20blood%20pressure%2C%20heart%20disease,liver%20disease%2C%20and%20digestive%20problems.&text=Cancer%20of%20the%20breast%2C%20mouth,liver%2C%20colon%2C%20and%20rectum.&text=Weakening%20of%20the%20immune%20system%2C%20increasing%20the%20chances%20of%20getting%20sick.&text=Learning%20and%20memory%20problems%2C%20including%20dementia%20and%20poor%20school%20performance. |
|
|---|
|
|
October 29, 2022 is recognized as the DEA's National Drug Take Back Day 2022. Twice a year, CCDP participates in this day to properly dispose of unused, unwanted, or expired medications in Carter County. National Drug Take Back Days' happen in the spring and fall during the months of April and October each year. CCDP along side of local law enforcement agencies collected 74 pounds of medication last April. That's 74 pounds of prescription and over-the-counter medication that will not make it to Carter County streets, land in young hands, and prevent potential overdoses. CCDP will be at two locations on October 29th from 10am-2pm. The sites will be: Roan Mountain Pharmacy and City of Elizabethton Parks and Recreation. |
|
|---|
|
|
 |
September Update
By Shannon Payne, PEAK Mentor Program Director
Children at risk for negative school and postschool outcomes, such as academic failure, dropout, detention or incarceration, and unemployment, often experience early onsets of problematic behavior and poor choice making. At-risk status is defined in varying ways, but typically includes demographic features, home and community factors, and individual skill deficits. Children at risk for negative outcomes require intense, targeted, structured interventions that both prevent future occurrences of problematic behavior and intervene on specific deficits to improve the common effects of at-risk status. Preventative action should focus on early intervention that promotes the development of protective factors and is inclusive of systematic components surrounding the child, such as the community, schools, and family.
Youth mentoring programs show great promise as a low cost intervention for youth at risk for developing a range of psychological, social, and behavioral problems. Recent research has highlighted the positive impact of one-on-one mentoring relationships for children and adolescents showing externalizing behaviors such as aggression, substance use, and other delinquent behaviors. In addition, one recent study assessed the influence of mentoring relationships on a wide range of youth outcomes, and showed particularly potent effects for mentoring on youth depressive symptoms. As a result, youth mentoring programs have grown in popularity as a strategy for intervening with youth at-risk for diverse problems, and an estimated 2.5 million U.S. children and adolescents are paired with caring adults through mentoring programs each year.
If you are interested in becoming a PEAK Mentor and being a positive influence in a kid's life, please reach out via email, phone, text, or Facebook to Shannon Payne shannon@cartercountydrugprevention.org (423) 707-9207. Please refer kiddos that could benefit from our program via email or phone.
Every kid is one caring adult away from being a success story! |
|
|---|
|
|
|
|
This project is funded in part by the Tennessee Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services. |
|
|---|
|
|
 | |
|  |
|
|
|
|
