Thank you for your article about the new NorthStar Clinic that is designed to help address the health care needs of those with substance use disorder (“NorthStar ready to be new tool in opioid fight in Clark County,” The Columbian, May 31).
It is a full-circle moment as this facility is right down the street from the original site of the mid-2000s “pill mill” that played a very large role in bringing the opioid epidemic to Clark County in the first place. This (so-called) “doctor’s office” was problematic from day one and the rapidly rising opioid abuse and accompanying tragedies that occurred because of this clinic should have been deemed a public health crisis years sooner than it was.
I can only hope that policies and programs in 2023 are able to get ahead of this issue and begin to address things sooner than was the case in those years of the 2000s, where we did not yet know what grief and destruction was to come.
