Fighting Mississippi’s opioid epidemic has become the passion of one Indianola native.
Mary Nelson Robertson, who was recently hired on full-time at the Mississippi State Extension Service office at Mississippi State, spoke to the Indianola Rotary Club this week about her work in raising awareness about opioids, particular in rural and agricultural settings.
Robertson said people in those areas have a higher susceptibility to become addicted to prescription opioids.
“(They) are at a higher risk to develop an opioid use disorder,” Robertson said, though she noted there are multiple theories as to why that is the case.
She said workers in the AG industry have a higher risk of getting hurt on the job, which can lead to them obtaining prescription opioids.
The PReventing Opioid Misuse In the SouthEast: the PROMISE Initiative is supported by the FY17 USDA NIFA Rural Health and Safety Education Competitive Grants Program of the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Grant # 2017-46100-27225 and the FY18 Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) Rural Opioids Technical Assistance Grants (ROTA) # TI-18-022.
She said one-in-five people (or 20 percent) with a 10-day opioid prescription will become addicted.
Robertson, a 2011 graduate of Indianola Academy moved to Tuscaloosa after high school and pursued and obtained her Bachelor’s degree and her master's degree at the University of Alabama.
The daughter of Jim and Elyette Robertson of Indianola, she is now a doctoral candidate at Mississippi State University and works full-time for the college.
Robertson said that 130 people die each day from opioids, which is more than car wrecks, violent crime and street drugs.
“Opioids are killing a lot of great people,” she said.
There were 3.3 million opioid prescriptions distributed in Mississippi in 2017, she said, right at the state’s total population.
“There was enough for every man, woman and child to have a prescription,” she said.
She also noted the rise in synthetic opioids, which are made in a laboratory, and are much more potent than traditional opioids.
She said the number of overdose deaths related to opioids is higher than the reported statistics, because many are classified as other medical illnesses, like heart attacks.
There has been a lot of debate in recent years about doctors’ roles in the epidemic, but Robertson said that 53 percent of individuals obtained their drugs through misuse, meaning they got it from someone other than their doctor.
Robertson also raised awareness that addiction is “not a choice” and “not a habit” but rather a disease.
She said that someone who is addicted to opioids is 40 times more likely to become addicted to heroin, compared to 15 times for cocaine users, three times for marijuana users and two times for alcohol users.
Robertson said she will be writing her dissertation over the next year and hopes to obtain her doctorate next December.
