NORFOLK, Va. - Virginia's Attorney General says the fight against opiate overdose in Hampton Roads is working, but there's still a lot of work to be done.
Attorney General Mark Herring appeared at First Presbyterian Church on Colonial Ave. on Friday for the Hampton Roads Opioid Working Group's 2018 Clergy Leadership Summit; a celebration of the group's two-year anniversary.
Herring helped create the Opioid Working Group in 2016, which aims to attack the region's opioid problem through enforcement, education, prevention and a wider availability of the overdose antidote, Naloxone.
The results so far have been promising, Herring told a packed room.
"Last year, the number of fatal overdoses from the Hampton Roads area, through the first quarter, decreased by 20 percent so that’s encouraging but we know that we cannot let up at all," said Herring. "There’s still way too many people dying and battling addiction. We also know if we let up on the gas, this could come back."
Also present during the Summit was U.S. Attorney for Virginia's Eastern District, G. Zachary Terwilliger.
The Summit was organized by the Urban Renewal Center.
