PAULDING \u2014 A community drug and opiate forum is being planned for Paulding in May.<\/p>\n
The Paulding County Republican Women are organizing the event, which will be held from 6-8:30 p.m. May 10 at the Paulding County OSU Extension Building. The event is free and open to the public. A light dinner will be provided during the event, with free-will donations accepted.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe reason why we decided to host the forum is during one of our meetings Tim Monico (regional liaison for northwest Ohio from Ohio Secretary of State\u2019s office) came to speak and using napkins he said \u2018if you have heroin, you can overdose on this much,\u2019 \u2018if you have fentanyl, you can overdose on this much\u2019 and \u2018if you have carfentanil, you can overdose on this much,\u201d said Laurie Lucas, president of the Paulding County Republican Women.<\/p>\n
She said the amount of carfentanil was very small. The National Institute of Health categorizes it as\u201done of the most potent opiods known\u201d\u2019 with \u201ca quantitative potency approximately 10,000 times that of morphine and 100 times that of fentanyl.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cDrug dealers are now lacing marijuana with carfentanil, which is a synthetic (opioid) drug,\u201d Lucas said. \u201cPeople need to be aware of how dangerous it is.\u201d<\/p>\n
Several speakers have been lined up for the event including: Paulding County Common Pleas Court Judge Tiffany Beckman, a graduate from the Paulding County Drug Court program, Juvenile Court Judge Michael Wehrkamp, diversion\/attendance office Elizabeth Zartman, Sheriff Jason Landers and other law enforcement representatives, State Rep. Craig Riedel, Mercer County assistant prosecutor Amy Ikerd and Randi Ostry with the Ohio Attorney General\u2019s Office.<\/p>\n
Organizers also are looking to get a doctor and Monico to speak as well. Speakers will discuss what they are seeing in their respective fields as well as how they are trying to combat the drug and opiate epidemic. Each speaker will have 15 minutes to talk and then there will be a question-and-answer session at the end.<\/p>\n
Flyers about the event will be going out to all county schools. Everyone from throughout the county is welcome to attend.<\/p>\n
\u201cI hope it gives people the information they need,\u201d Lucas said.<\/p>\n
The Paulding County Republican Women will have a meeting to finalize the forum on May 1.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
PAULDING \u2014 A community drug and opiate forum is being planned for Paulding in May. The Paulding County Republican Women<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"colormag_page_container_layout":"default_layout","colormag_page_sidebar_layout":"default_layout","nf_dc_page":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2301,499],"tags":[1765,10091,10090,10092],"class_list":["post-21585","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general-news","category-health","tag-drug","tag-forum","tag-opiate","tag-paulding-county-republican-women"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2YQd9-5C9","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-04 09:38:15","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.westbendnews.net\/autonews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21585","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.westbendnews.net\/autonews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.westbendnews.net\/autonews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.westbendnews.net\/autonews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.westbendnews.net\/autonews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21585"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.westbendnews.net\/autonews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21585\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.westbendnews.net\/autonews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21585"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.westbendnews.net\/autonews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21585"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.westbendnews.net\/autonews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21585"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}