Drugs And Housing

By Gordon HopkinsDoes the removal of rundown and abandoned houses reduce crime; specifically, drug crime?That was one of the questions asked when the City of Fairbury’s Law Enforcement Committee met Tuesday, November 14, 2023.“I’m just curious. You know, it seems like we haven’t had a big drug bust for quite a while,” noted committee member and City Councilperson Phil Rogge, who acknowledged he wasn’t certain if this was a good thing or bad.Jefferson County Sheriff Nick Georgi told the committee, “We have quite a few investigations going on.”Reports on Drug Use in NebraskaDrug crimes have been on the rise in much of rural Nebraska. A UNL (University of Nebraska-Lincoln) study completed in 2021 showed a significant increase in methamphetamine usage in Nebraska, “Methamphetamine treatment admissions rose more than 200 percent in a 10-year period from 2008 to 2018, most notably among older adults.”More recently, the Midwest High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area (HIDTA) recently released its 2023 Nebraska Overdose Report. The results were not entirely surprising, indicating that fentanyl and methamphetamine are the top two drug threats to the region and fentanyl is causing the most overdose deaths in Nebraska.Drugs and HousingWhen asked if there has been an increase in drug crime in Jefferson County, sheriff Georgi said, “I wouldn’t say it has increased any. I would say it’s steady or gone down some.”Rogge asked if the demolition of houses in the city has had an impact.The sheriff said, “I know there are a handful of regular drug users that we used to deal with all the time that were in jail all the time have moved out of town.”The sheriff confirmed that some of those had been living in houses that were torn down.The city has placed a priority on abatement of housing considered to be rundown or dangerous. The impact on crime rates is only one of the reasons.Others are safety and the overall appearance of the city. Plus, it is hoped that some of those properties could eventually be the site of workforce housing.This policy has proven to be somewhat controversial, as some homeowners dispute when the city finds a house is not up to code. It was noted at the Law Enforcement meeting that, contrary to rumors, the city actually does not receive grants for the majority of these demolitions.The notion that removing abandoned or rundown houses can reduce crime is not a new one. In 1993, the Journal of Criminal Justice published a study intended to test the hypothesis that, “The number of drug, property, and violent crimes is higher on blocks with abandoned residential buildings than on comparable blocks without abandoned buildings.”According to the published results, “The study found that 41 percent of abandoned buildings could be entered without use of force. Of these open buildings, 83 percent showed evidence of illegal use by prostitutes, drug dealers, property criminals and others. Crime rates on blocks with open abandoned buildings were twice as high as on matched blocks without open buildings. Even if 90 percent of the crimes prevented are displaced to the surrounding area, the securing of abandoned buildings is apparently a cost-effective crime-control tactic for distressed neighborhoods.”FentanylMidwest HIDTA notes, “Fentanyl is a Schedule II controlled substance, similar to morphine but about 100 times more potent. Fentanyl is typically used to treat patients with chronic severe pain or severe pain following surgery. Illicitly manufactured fentanyl (IMF), primarily manufactured in foreign clandestine labs and smuggled into the United States through Mexico, is being distributed across the country and sold on the illegal drug market.”According to the CDC (Centers for Disease Control), synthetic opioids like IMF’s are the primary driver of overdose deaths in the United States. IMFs were responsible for 83 overdose deaths in Nebraska in 2021, a 53.7 percent increase from 2020 (54 to 83).Fentanyl is often mixed with other illicit drugs to increase the potency of the drug, sold as powders and nasal sprays, and increasingly pressed into pills made to look like legitimate prescription opioids. Because there is no official oversight or quality control, these counterfeit pills often contain lethal doses of fentanyl. Because of fentanyl’s potency and low cost, drug dealers have been mixing fentanyl with other drugs including heroin, methamphetamine and cocaine, to increase their profit margin; thereby increasing the likelihood of a fatal interaction.In fact, the overdose report claims, “The majority of illicit pills contains fentanyl.”Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) laboratory testing in 2023 revealed seven out of 10 fentanyl-laced counterfeit prescription pills now contain a potentially lethal dose of fentanyl, up from four out of 10 in 2021.Because of the concern that people may be taking fentanyl without knowing it, Jefferson County Diversion Services is looking into obtaining new drug-screening panels which can identify up to 17 different substances, including fentanyl. The full list of drugs the new panels will detect is: amphetamine, barbiturates, buprenorphine, benzodiazepines, cocaine, alcohol, fentanyl, K2 (synthetic marijuana), Ecstasy, methamphetamine, morphine, methadone, Oxycodone, phencydidine (PCP), tricydic antidepressants, marijuana, ketamine, kratom and heroin.At a meeting of the Jefferson County Board of Commissioners on Tuesday, November 7, 2023, Diversion Services Director Peggy Galloway explained the need for this, “Because that list (of drugs) is ever increasing. Right now, it’s 14 panel. And so it’s like, yeah, I want it, because with all of the new drugs that are coming out, and all the drug stops, they’re getting closer and closer and closer here. People don’t realize it. They don’t if they don’t read the news, you know. Hundreds of pounds, from marijuana to vape pods, hallucinogenics, opioids, you name it.”“There’s been times where people have tested, and they’ve admitted that they’ve done meth. But guess what shows up. Fentanyl,” said Galloway. “It’s in everything.”

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