It’s nabbed headlines on a regular basis throughout the year, taking lives and ruining lives.

The Era’s newsmaker of the year for 2016 is the opioid crisis. Nearly everyone has been impacted in some way — whether it’s directly, such as suffering from addiction, seeing a loved one suffer, helping an addict on the path to recovery; or indirectly, like having a more difficult time getting prescriptions refilled because of law changes.

McKean County District Attorney Stephanie Vettenburg Shaffer, Bradford City Police Chief Chris Lucco, Elk County District Attorney Shawn T. McMahon and Potter County District Attorney Andy Watson spoke to The Era about the crisis — how it came about, the efforts taken to address it and more.

“This epidemic was nationwide and, unfortunately, McKean County was not immune,” Shaffer said. “The type of illegal drugs that are prevalent seems to change every few years. Some experts indicate that heroin addiction often begins with prescription pain medication.

“The tie-in between the two is that prescription pain medication is only prescribed for a certain period of time and, when the prescription is no longer filled, illegal drugs are easier to obtain and often cheaper,” she said.

Lucco had a similar opinion.

“I think the over prescribing was the ‘feeder system’ of the problem,” the chief said. “However in my opinion where it reached the epidemic status is when the prescriptions drugs became harder to obtain and the addicts then sought out street opioids such as heroin and butyryl fentanyl. This particular synthetic and illegal fentanyl is said to be up to 60 times stronger than morphine (heroin) so the addict was using an equivalent amount of what they thought was heroin, leading to respiratory arrest and death in approximately 12 to 15 cases in the local area.”

McMahon explained how the crisis became known as an epidemic in the first place.

“Mindful that an epidemic is defined as a widespread occurrence of an infectious disease at a particular time,” he began, “the fact that the use of opioids, particularly heroin, can cause an overdose resulting in death and the fact that individuals are dying nationwide as a result of using heroin has consequently resulted in the classification of an ‘opioid epidemic.’

“In addition, opioid addiction does not discriminate, it can affect anyone or any family regardless of their social or economic status. Therefore, death and the possibility that opioid addiction can happen to anyone has resulted in the opioid epidemic receiving much public attention it deserves this past year,” Elk County’s top prosecutor said.

There’s not just one cause to this epidemic, McMahon said, but added that he feels there is a causal link between doctors prescribing opioids, as the medication carries a high risk of addiction.

“Individuals and families should treat an opioid prescription from a medical professional as being as dangerous as a loaded weapon in a house,” McMahon said, “as I would hope that a medical professional would likewise do the same.”

The year saw ramped up efforts across the region to educate the public about opioids and the very real danger of addiction. And each county has taken steps that are starting to make a difference.

“There has been less activity related to heroin, included heroin overdoses, in the last six months. It is unknown if this is related to the increased awareness of the problem or something else,” Shaffer said. “All disciplines have likely played a part in that. There is an increased awareness of treatment needs, increased efforts in the medical community and ongoing efforts of law enforcement. Public forums that have occurred in various locations across the county have certainly led to education.”

Bradford City Police, Lucco said, “took a pretty aggressive approach on this issue.”

For example, “with the backing of the mayor and city council, I was given the authority to pull two officers from the department and assign them full-time to the Drug Task Force to concentrate their efforts in the city, and specifically, heroin sales,” the chief explained. “This cooperative effort was very fruitful and netted eight to ten arrests.”

Another initiative was “to saturate the city with patrols for several months,” he said. Officers came in on overtime to do proactive activities, which resulted in “a multitude of arrests, not only drug-related, but DUIs (driving under the influence), wanted persons.”

Those patrols sent a message to drug dealers — “the City of Bradford is not going to be a welcoming or safe environment to conduct your illegal business,” Lucco said.

Also in 2016, Lucco applied for, and received, a grant that put nasal naloxone (brand name Narcan) in the hands of officers in the city, Bradford Township and University of Pittsburgh at Bradford. “Since the deployment of the Narcan in mid-September, we have had two or three deployments that resulted in saved lives.”

Lucco explained the Task Force for Community Intervention was formed with Bradford Regional Medical Center’s behavioral health, Bradford City and Township police, McKean County Drug and Alcohol Services and Bradford City Mayor Tom Riel. “To date we have held two events, a very well attended town hall meeting that was held in late spring of this year, as well as hosting Secretary Gary Tennis at the Bradford Area High School who addressed the school students during a packed assembly and later that afternoon, held a discussion with the public.”

Efforts in Potter County have gained the attention of the state. Watson gave a brief rundown on what has been happening there to combat the epidemic — “C.L.E.A.N. Protocol; drug treatment court, school speeches, public forum speeches, speeches in Harrisburg and local college, in Gettysburg and for the Department of Justice; Narcan implementation, pursuing harsh penalties for dealers as opposed to addicts; active participation and committee member for Cole Memorial Hospital’s heroin abuse committee.”

Watson said Potter County is unique in that the judge, district attorney, state police, borough police, Cole Memorial Hospital, Drug and Alcohol Abuse Services and other agencies “communicate very well and share information towards a common goal. We all care about the safety and security of the citizens and Potter County, and put aside any personal differences we may have. Potter County has been recognized as one of the 67 counties at the forefront of battling the heroin epidemic due to not only our strict prosecution, but the programs we have implemented to battle the problem and help addicts to achieve sobriety.”

Elk County’s law enforcement has stopped approximately 4,000 bags of heroin from hitting the streets there, seizing drugs from vehicles returning from Allegheny County and raiding residences in Johnsonburg and St. Marys to seize more drugs.

With the assistance of Dennis Heindl and the late Rose Heindl, public forums have been held to help educate and inform the public. St. Marys City Police have obtained a new K-9 to help with the war on drugs, and a full-time position of county detective was created in McMahon’s office to focus largely on drug investigations.

Medication collection boxes have been implemented in each county as well.

For her part, Shaffer said recent legislation has both helped and hurt efforts to combat the crisis.

“Mandatory sentences for subsequent sales or certain quantities have been overturned by the appellate courts, making it difficult in some cases to seek lengthy sentences for dealers,” she said.

“However, amendments to the Drug, Device and Cosmetic Act that went into effect this year include more drugs that previously were not included. This was a significant development because drugs are ever-changing and often do not fit entirely into a particular category, resulting in a lesser permissible sentence,” she explained.

“There is fairly recent legislation that provides immunity for certain drug offenses for certain individuals who seek emergency help for an overdose and for the individual suffering from an overdose,” she continued. “This legislation does not provide immunity for the most serious offenses. Nonetheless, this legislation has the potential to save lives as individuals will be more likely to seek assistance. People cannot be too scared to call for help.”

More legislation is on the way in 2017, Shaffer said.

“There will be additional legislation that will hopefully have the effect of minimizing addiction to prescriptions, including legislation that prevents an emergency prescriber from prescribing more than a 7-day supply with some exceptions,” she explained. “Effective Jan. 1, there will be additional requirements for pharmacies.

“There is new legislation that requires medical schools to include in their curriculum guidelines for pain medication and alternative treatments for pain. There is also proposed legislation related to prescriptions to minors for certain medications,” she added.

All in all, the law can only do so much. McMahon said drug awareness and safety begins at home.

“In order to effectively address the antisocial behavior that confronts our communities it must begin with individuals, their parents — including both mothers and fathers — and families,” he said. “It is important that we acknowledge parents who take on the awesome lifetime responsibility of raising a physically, mentally and emotionally healthy child to be an adult who is capable of contributing, coping and thriving in society.

“The child has no genetic predisposition to developing an addiction,” McMahon said. “Inevitably the child as an adult has a medical episode that results in an opioid or some other addictive medication being prescribed.

“They have an event that leads to a mental or emotional health episode or they develop a peer group beyond the parents’ control that exposes them to illicit drug use,” he said. “These are truly the unfortunate cases when parents do all the right things raising a child and their child has a fatal overdose that the parents had no control over.”

McMahon added, “That is the troubling part of the non-discriminatory nature of opioids or any other type of addictive drug.”