BROCKTON HOPES TO GARNER MONEY TO FIGHT DRUG ABUSE

BROCKTON - City and social service officials will ask the state to
give them up to $200,000 launch an effort to stop drug overdoses in
Brockton.

The city and High Point, a private treatment program with a center in
Brockton, will be applying for a state grant to fund a program to help
prevent fatal and nonfatal opioid overdoses, including those involving
heroin and OxyContin.

"We will be looking at how do you prevent deaths," said Bob Martin,
the city's human services administrator. "The grant is not to prevent
addiction but to prevent overdoses."

A group of nearly two dozen people from groups -- such as Learn to
Cope, Brockton Area Multi Services Inc. and hospitals -- are now
mapping out what steps the community can take to stop the overdoses if
the city does get the grant.

Julie Lizotte, of High Point, said the city could get up to $200,000
the first year if it gets the grant. The grant can be renewed for two
additional years, she said.

Between eight and 12 communities will be awarded the money by the
Department of Public Health.

The money will be distributed based on how many overdoses -- both fatal
and nonfatal -- there are in the community, Lizotte said.

Brockton ranks ninth in the state for fatal and nonfatal overdoses
between 2003 and 2005, with 65 overdoses, she said.

Boston tops the list with 570, followed by Worcester, New Bedford,
Springfield, Lynn and Fall River.

The Enterprise, in a yearlong package of stories called "Wasted
Youth," found that at least 144 people have died within 31/2 years in
this region from overdoses of opiates, such as heroin, as well as
oxycodone, the chief ingredient in the powerful painkiller OxyContin

The deadline for the grant application is April 3.

Martin said the plan would likely include the distribution of Narcan,
known generically as naloxone, which was developed as an antidote for
opiate overdoses.

Opiates depress the respiratory rate and, in an overdose, the person
stops breathing. Narcan blocks the effect of the opiate so the person
can breathe.