LARAMIE — “My friends are dying.You’ve got to do something.”

Special Agent Louis “Chip” Cirillo, quoted a plea from a methamphetamine dealer during a presentation to the Laramie City Council via Zoom in July.

Cirillo is a Laramie Police Department officer also assigned to the Rocky Mountain High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area in Colorado, Montana, Utah and Wyoming.

“Our officers are highly trained, highly motivated and extremely professional. And when we deal with these folks, we treat them with compassion and dignity. And we really want them to get better. We really want them to get away from this.”

“It really breaks your heart, someone who is fighting an addiction with methamphetamine, saying ‘Hey, this stuff is really bad,’” he said.

While there are no definitive answers, education, prevention and treatment are priorities, Cirillo added.

Unfortunately, treatment can be hard to find. Albany County does not have treatment centers or intake facilities for drug users. Overdose patients are taken to Ivinson Memorial Hospital’s emergency department. After they are released, families don’t have the training and support they need. Cirillo said there is a need for strategic partnerships and a multi-disciplinary approach to identify the persons at risk.

“I’ve talked to addicts and they’re like, ‘I’m waiting for a bed. I’m waiting for a counselor. Or it’s going to be four months before I can go here.’ They can’t wait that long,” he said.

Cost can also be a barrier.

“Nothing in medicine is cheap, but I mean, what’s the cost of a human life? What’s the value, what’s the worth? That’s what we need to ask ourselves,” Cirillo said. “And I’ve seen these people who have beaten this, and they were some of the most horrible individuals to deal with at the time, and they go from being — I’m going to use a Lord of the Rings analogy — but they go from being Gollum to Legolas.”

Information and prevention have been local priorities, said Tracy Young, community engagement consultant for the Coalition to Prevent Suicide and Substance Use.

“We truly are prevention in the sense that we work to prevent people from ever using,” Young said.“We are looked to for postvention, but at that point it is not our main role. We educate on opioids and fentanyl, specifically the addictiveness and the possibility of other drugs being cut with fentanyl.”

The group provides Deterra bags, a safe medication disposal system.There is a drop box for drugs at the Albany County Detention Center, and pharmacies hold events to take back drugs that are unused.

COPSSA also has worked with local health care agencies to change prescribing practices, an effort that has played the biggest role in preventing opioid use, Young said.

While it can’t prevent abuse, Narcan, a naloxone nasal spray, is now carried by law enforcement officers throughout Albany County.

Albany County Sheriff Aaron Appelhans said that all deputies also carry a Narcan overdose-preventing injection. It also is available at the detention center in addition to a new scanner at the center that allows deputies to determine if someone is suspected of carrying the pills within the body.

All city of Laramie officers are trained on identifying overdose symptoms and administering Narcan as needed, Cirillo said.

Cirillo added that Rocky Mountain High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area has been seeking ways to prevent drugs from entering the community since 1996.

“They realized we need to work with our federal partners all the way down to our local agencies to have a coherent and cohesive response to the issues that are affecting all of us,” Cirillo told the council.

He said the priority is not finding individual users. Instead, the focus is on getting to the system and working up toward the drug lords who are “bringing this poison into our communities.”