Seminole County sheriff to host opioid community forum

The opioid epidemic has hit central Florida particularly hard and Seminole County’s sheriff is calling on the public to assist law enforcement in the fight.

Sheriff Dennis Lemma is hosting a community forum on the opioid crisis Thursday night at Seminle State College in Lake Mary.

News 96.5 WDBO spoke with sheriff Lemma about the opioids and Thursday’s forum.  Sheriff Lemma says more opioid overdoses kill more people in Seminole County than car crashes and shootings combined and the trend of fatal overdoses increasing.

“In 2017, we had 62 people die of an opioid related overdose.  In 2018, that was up [over] 80 and we’re tracking greater than 80 right now,” said Lemma.

But the news isn’t all bad.  Lemma says since deputies started carrying narcan with them, hundreds of lives have been saved.

“There were more than 450 deployments last year of narcan or naloxone, quite literally bringing that many people back to life,” said Lemma.

During Thursday’s forum, Lemma plans to spend a half hour educating citizens on the current state of the opioid crisis before a panel of experts will discuss the issue and what the count is doing to save lives.