Heroin and other opiates continue to impact Southeastern North Carolina, even as health care and law enforcement efforts try to stem the tide, according to the latest-available arrest and overdose data.
 
"I think everybody recognizes the epidemic nature of the problem with opioid abuse," Sen. Thom Tillis said Wednesday.
 
On Tuesday, Tillis gave a floor speech supporting the Comprehensive Addiction Recovery Act, which he co-sponsored. Since then, he said, he's heard from two family friends who thanked him because their sons died of overdoses.
 
This week, the U.S. Senate voted to cloture the Comprehensive Addiction Recovery Act, a wide-ranging bill that would expand the availability of overdose-reversal drug naloxone, improve prescription drug monitoring services, help treat prisoners who are addicted, and launch an evidence-based treatment and interventions program, along with other measures. Tillis, one of the bill's sponsors, said he expects the bill will be advanced as quickly as "timing and procedures" allow.
 
"In the year that I've been here," he said, "this is the first bill that I can say, when it goes into place, it'll start saving lives on an immediate basis."
 
Even though the federal efforts represent progress, the senator acknowledged it needs to happen in conjunction with other efforts.
 
"We really do need a concerted federal, state and local effort, including law enforcement, to solve this problem," Tillis said.

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