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Date: 9/29/2021
SPRINGFIELD – District Attorney Anthony Gulluni and his team are working to curb addiction’s growing impacts with the Hampden County Addiction Taskforce.
Gulluni said establishing the taskforce was an immediate priority when taking over in 2015.
“When I took office, it really became the advent of the addiction and opioid crisis in this region,” said Gulluni.
He explained that gaps in communication between law enforcement and the medical sector made it essential to provide a unified platform.
To jumpstart the taskforce, the district attorney assembled the now-retired Hampden County Sheriff Michael Ashe along with the Baystate and Mercy medical centers to encompass a wide perspective. Gulluni shared how the connective communication has helped limit drug overdoses, including one instance where the hospitals informed police units about a fatal strain of heroin effecting patients from a certain community. This information allowed investigators to respond in a short period of time and arrest those in charge of the operation.
According to Gulluni, one of the taskforce’s key directives was rewriting the narrative about addiction. “There still is a stigma about addiction, there was a greater stigma at the time [I took office] … a lot of people thought it was a moral failing. Now we know it’s a disease,” said Gulluni. The district attorney shared that he has steadily built an educational platform on addiction’s impacts, teaming with grassroots organizations like the Ludlow CARES Coalition, hosting addiction-related conferences and establishing a post-overdose outreach program to work with survivors.
In instances where overdoses are occurring, Gulluni explained that providing municipal organizations with free doses of Narcan has been essential in saving lives. “A lot of towns and cities didn’t equip their first responders with Narcan. We knew the more Narcan that was out there, the more it was going to save lives,” said Gulluni.
The district attorney shared that the Narcan program has given out “tens of thousands” of doses over the last four years in their mission to save lives and provide people another chance to overcome addiction. “That very scary event is a time where many people realize ‘I have a major problem,’” said Gulluni.
The Hampden County Addiction Taskforce’s work became even more challenging during the pandemic. “The pandemic created a lot of despair. People on the path toward wellness were turned around by the loss of a family member or employment,” said Gulluni. Alongside the pandemic’s impact, he explained that addiction can start from commonplace situations through the prescription of opioids.
Despite the hurdles, Gulluni shared his optimism about the progress made over his tenure. He explained that the taskforce is planning to roll out the Overdose Fatality Refute team, which will partner with hospitals to analyze fatal overdoses as case studies to learn from these scenarios. “It’s the first of its kind in Massachusetts, it takes a program that we use in other disciplines and we’re now applying it to addiction-based overdoses. We really think it’s a game changer,” said Gulluni.
To learn more about the Hampden County Addiction Taskforce, readers can visit their website https://hampdenda.com/community-safety-and-outreach-unit/hampden-county-addiction-taskforce/.