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SALT LAKE CITY — Utah is fourth in the nation for fatal drug overdoses, according to the Utah Department of Health.
That's one reason state law enforcement and health care professionals came together this week for a two-day Utah Heroin and Opioid Summit.
As many as 80 percent of heroin users started with prescription drugs. A Utah father, who lost his son to a heroin overdose, told the gathering that was his son's path before a decade of addiction did him in.
"I had no idea what to do, and I was lost," Mark Lewis said. "But I loved my son."
Lewis is a security director with the TSA in Salt Lake. But on Wednesday, he shared his story as the father of an opioid and heroin addict.
"Unless you've experienced it personally, you can't understand how powerful that addiction is," he said.
His son, Tony, tried OxyContin in middle school. Mark Lewis was surprised at the availability of the potent drug. "Because other kids were getting them from their parents' medicine cabinet," he said.
By high school, Tony was a heroin addict.
"Tony told me that he was hooked on heroin the first time he tried it," Mark Lewis said. "You can't afford to let your children try this even once."
Tony Lewis died from a heroin overdose 23 months ago Tuesday. That's why prevention is so critical.
"I think we continue to prevent," said Angela Stander, prescription drug overdose prevention coordinator with the Utah Department of Health. "We continue to prevent people from starting down this path of addiction and getting involved in these types of drugs to where they turned off this synthetic type heroin."
The experts at the summit agree they need to tackle this epidemic with prevention, law enforcement and treatment that begins in jail and continues to monitor the addict once they're out the door. Lewis wishes he could have done at least one thing differently.
"I wish I had educated myself more and done my own research," he said. "We were so lost and caught up in the struggle; we had no idea where to turn for help."
Now, he knows, there are resources available. "This will take years to turn around," he said. "We can't turn this around in weeks or months. We've got to get our people at an earlier age to understand."
What's working? The Justice Reinvestment Initiative is only a year old. With that law, addicts face less time in prison and the money saved goes to treatment. Drug courts have also worked well in Utah. But more solutions are needed.
