Just like the old saying "It takes a village to raise a child," it takes a community to band together to combat a drug epidemic in the country.

But what is the solution that will help curb this deadly problem that is consuming people at an alarming rate?The newly formed Carbon County Opiate Task Force hopes to find some answers to help county residents beat addictions, help students stay drug free and help the court system, which is seeing a rapidly rising caseload.Over three dozen agencies, medical professionals, parents and concerned residents recently gathered and worked to identify where the task force hopes to go moving forward.Identifying the problemCarbon County has seen a rapidly rising number of people with drug and alcohol addictions and many are starting at a younger age.Some addicts' stories begin with an injury and prescription for a narcotic to manage the pain.Abbie Guardiani, Lehighton Area High School nurse, said that she sees students often get prescriptions for narcotics for minor things like getting their wisdom teeth out or a back injury while lifting weights.Dr. Ernie Sully of St. Luke's University Health Network said a study showed that 7 to 9 percent of seniors in high school will come in contact with some sort of oral narcotic medication.Of those who have access to it, 75 percent of the time, the teens are getting the narcotic as a result of a relative having a prescription or being prescribed a narcotic for an injury or surgery."They aren't buying them off the street," Sully said."They are going to the medicine shelf because mom or dad had been prescribed them and they're taking them because they want to see what it feels like."Because of this, the number of students starting down the road of addiction has been increasing, sometimes with deadly consequences.Addiction does not discriminate against gender, age or social status and those who are battling this disease look like any other person on the street.Identifying the gapsDozens of agencies provide a number of services to those facing addiction.The problem is, they may not know what services each provides or how other agencies are affected."Everyone knows about this problem," said Christopher Sorrentino, case management supervisor for Carbon-Monroe-Pike Drug and Alcohol Commission."But they don't know how it is affecting other folks. They don't know how it affects the community at large, our hospitals, the doctors, adult probation, the courts."Craig Reichl, principal of Lehighton Area High School, asked if there could be a resource guide describing what each agency offers so that everyone knows what is available.Rick Parsons, the Carbon County chief adult probation officer trainee, offered his own experiences in other counties during his career."There are counties out there who have great drug courts and great prevention programs, but they still have a drug problem," he said. "The only way we are ever going to address this is if we identify all the different possible intercept points and attack it from multiple directions."Intervention and preventionEarly intervention programs for families who have been affected by addiction is one step to curbing a problem, Cindy Henning of Carbon County Concerned Citizens said.Guardiani asked about more prevention and education for the students, parents and the medical community.Jim Thorpe Police Chief Joseph Schatz, who was a

D.A.R.E. instructor for a decade, said that prevention programs were available in the schools for years through the

D.A.R.E. program and it had proven results."I had an opportunity to speak with a young woman who went through the program," he said. "She came from a not-so-good home and told me that having the police officers in the school teaching, it sort of put the fear in her and now at 25, she can say she has never touched any kind of drug."Schatz said that he feels programs like

D.A.R.E. that put police in the schools showing students the realities of what is happening in their own communities may help slow the problem down in the future.The problem though, like every solution, comes down to funding. Years ago the state funded the

D.A.R.E. program, but as program funding became tight, the state gave less and less until it completely cut it from the budgets.Carolee Boyer, outpatient treatment supervisor for Carbon-Monroe-Pike Drug and Alcohol Commission, pointed out that not every school district in Carbon County believes there is an issue within their schools.Prescribing narcoticsGuardiani also asked how to educate doctors on the need to stop overprescribing narcotics.Sully said that from the medical community side, the overprescribing of narcotics started in the mid-1990s after the federal government told doctors that they were under-treating pain and should be prescribing more pain medications to control pain."I'm not making excuses, but a lot of that came about from sources outside the medical community saying 'listen, you're not doing a good enough job.' Now we're overprescribing," he said.The group asked Sully about alternatives, such as acupuncture or yoga. The problem is that guidelines have not yet caught up and insurance doesn't cover many alternative medicines, which may require multiple sessions and can be expensive, so narcotics continue to be the go-to for pain treatment.Sully said that in addition to doctors, parents need to be more involved and be responsible in the case their child is prescribed narcotics for an injury.