Battling Pulaski County’s drug epidemic is not a cheap proposition, according to Sheriff Jeff Richwine. “You’re looking at, I think, one of the worst drug epidemics that we’ve seen,” he told the county council Monday. “And I lived through the ’60s and ’70s, and I don’t think it’s nothing to what you’re seeing now.”
The sheriff said his department has had three saves with Narcan in the past three weeks. “I can hear some of you thinking now, ‘I don’t care.’ Well, there’s people that do care about those people, and this is a thing that cuts the gamut,” Richwine said. “It’s not just poor people. It’s not just people that don’t work. It’s not people that live on the west side or the east side. This is the whole county.”
Richwine urged council members to learn more about what his deputies are doing and take that into account when trying to stabilize the county’s finances.
