The Observation Deck

It has been another tough week in Lakewood and Cuyahoga County for Heroin overdoses.

4 in Lakewood.

If you are using, seek help, it can be beat.

If you know a user, please warn them again.

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Thankfully our public officials have prepared by closing our hospital.
Nice work by our "Safety Director".

If the GOP succeeds in its ghoulish plan to dismantle Medicaid, things will get even worse.

On the bright side.......Solstice Steps!

Michael Deneen wrote:Thankfully our public officials have prepared by closing our hospital.
Nice work by our "Safety Director".

If the GOP succeeds in its ghoulish plan to dismantle Medicaid, things will get even worse.

On the bright side.......Solstice Steps!

Mike

It is not political, It is a tragedy.

When the Federal Government makes Naloxone Kits available for any public space, school, business or family, the problem is bigger than Lakewood.

All

If you know a user, help them seek help.

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Michael Deneen wrote:Thankfully our public officials have prepared by closing our hospital.
Nice work by our "Safety Director".

If the GOP succeeds in its ghoulish plan to dismantle Medicaid, things will get even worse.

On the bright side.......Solstice Steps!

Mike

It is not political, It is a tragedy.

When the Federal Government makes Naloxone Kits available for any public space, school, business or family, the problem is bigger than Lakewood.

All

If you know a user, help them seek help.

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Jim O'Bryan wrote:It is not political, It is a tragedy.

Most human tragedies are either caused or aggravated by political action or inaction.
This opioid epidemic can be traced back to Big Pharma....which told its politicians back in the 1990s and 2000s that drugs like Oxycontin were safe.
Lots of lobbying cash went to make sure that prescription pads kept humming.

The same can be said for many other tragedies....behind every mass shooting, there are politicians that kowtow to the NRA.
Of course, these politicians are the ones who yell "Don't politicize tragedy!" whenever a shooting occurs.
We need to recognize and point out when weak-willed politicians enable real life death to occur.....not just sit by meekly and offer "thoughts and prayers".

Jim O'Bryan wrote:the problem is bigger than Lakewood.

Yes, it's bigger than Lakewood.
However, Lakewood is the only city I can name that VOLUNTARILY closed its hospital as this crisis was growing.
It's also a city foolish enough to do a "community needs assessment" that completely ignored the growing national crisis.
I think that level of incompetence should be pointed out, even if it does ruffle some feathers.

Michael Deneen wrote:[However, Lakewood is the only city I can name that VOLUNTARILY closed its hospital as this crisis was growing.
It's also a city foolish enough to do a "community needs assessment" that completely ignored the growing national crisis.
I think that level of incompetence should be pointed out, even if it does ruffle some feathers.

Ruffles feathers or dulls the comments and thoughts.

East Cleveland voluntary allowed the Cleveland Clinic to close their hospital, after residents and city council fought them.

They received a new family health center, $76 million+ and other pluses for the city, courtesy of Cleveland Clinic and East Cleveland Council.

And they didn't even own their hospital, the Cleveland Clinic did!

That would be $76 million more than we got for closing a hospital we owned, and then we had to pay the Clinic to build a family health center.

East Cleveland making Lakewood government look like chumps.

To tie this together, when working with East Cleveland on a paper, Dan Slife and I would often get pulled over in the hood. Every time it was the same, "you guys from Lakewood coming here to buy Heroin all the time...."

Again, on topic, A flood of bad shit on the streets, warn user, help friends.

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Lakewood is at the epicenter of this opioid epidemic.

We could have had a dedicated ER (plus regular ER), with an ATTACHED short-term and long-term inpatient rehab AND outpatient rehab.

We probably still COULD - if the Mayor and his greedy developer buddies would give up their expectations of illegally-obtained grandeur - because such a hospital would not be a full-service GENERAL hospital competing with Fairview.

Tony Parker knows how to run a real rehab, up on Triskett. He understands the problem, AND the solution, and is WORKING the solution for his guys.