Opioid addiction and subsequent deaths have led to a massive multi-billion effort by the federal government to ease the drug abuse that has hit Kentucky particularly hard.

A promising step has been taken in southcentral Kentucky. The Barren River Area Development District has hired mental health professional Brooke Edwards as the first director of the Barren River Office of Drug Control Policy.

Edwards has been on the BRADD staff for five years as a mental health associate, and now will head an office that is part of the Anchor Project. She will lead the 10-county effort funded by the national Opioid Settlement, money from which Kentucky has been allotted $478 million.

Opioid abuse is devastating to individuals, their careers, their families and the community. It hits hard on many fronts.

According to the National Safety Council, the number of preventable deaths from opioids in 2022 reached an all-time high of 227,039 – fentanyl is heavily contributing to the dark statistics.

However, overall, evidence is beginning to appear of some success in fighting opioid use in Kentucky.

A 2021 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report showed that Kentucky ranked fourth among the 38 states studied in per-resident costs of opioid-use disorder and deaths resulting from it, according to a 2021 report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

In 2023, the report shows, there were 1,984 overdose deaths in the state. That’s down from the 2022 total of 2,135 and the 2021 high of 2,250.

BRADD Executive Director Eric Sexton told the Daily News last week that bids for a $20 million crisis intake center — to be built by the nonprofit LifeSkills — are on the horizon.

We are hopeful that the funding and the Office of Drug Control Policy will bring mechanisms into play across the region that will help further battle this drug abuse epidemic that affects so many.