With the pace of drug overdose deaths on the rise in the Twin Cities, Democratic U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar will host an event Sunday at the Hazelden's youth addiction treatment center in Plymouth to highlight efforts to combat heroin use in the state.
In the deadliest year on record for such deaths, fifty-four people died of heroin overdoses last year in Hennepin County alone, the Star Tribune's Matt McKinney reported.
"The rise in opiate-related deaths came even as drug experts, law enforcement and others fought to slow a problem they say is fueled by legal drugs in the bathroom cabinet and an underground market flooded with cheap heroin."
Joining Klobuchar at the event are Hennepin County Sheriff Rich Stanek, Department of Human Services Commissioner Lucinda Jesson, Buffalo Police Chief Mitchell Weinzetl and state Sen. Chris Eaton, DFL-Brooklyn Center, Hazelden's vice president of public affairs and community relations William Moyers, Carol Falkowski, founder of Drug Abuse Dialogues, and Laura Moore, whose son, Nick Moore, died of heroin overdose on Valentine's Day 2012.
Eaton, whose daughter died of a heroin overdose in 2007, has proposed legislation that would allow law enforcement to carry naloxone, a drug that can quickly reverse the effects of a heroin overdose.
