By Donald Wittkowski
A handful of local businesses were honored by Sea Isle City for their sponsorship of two community workshops in October that confronted the dangers of Cape May County’s opioid epidemic.
“We’re very, very fortunate to live in a community that has organizations that give back to us,” Mayor Leonard Desiderio said during the start of City Council’s meeting Tuesday.
Joined by members of Council, the mayor handed out certificates of appreciation to representatives of the Acme supermarket, the Wawa convenience store chain and Bennett Enterprises, headed by James Bennett, the owner of LaCosta Lounge and the Lobster Loft restaurant in Sea Isle.
Separately, Desiderio met with representatives of First Bank of Sea Isle City to thank them for supporting the community workshops, city spokeswoman Katherine Custer said.
Also during Tuesday’s Council meeting, Desiderio accepted a $1,000 donation from Boardwalk Settlement Services LLC, a local real estate title insurance company, to support Sea Isle’s 911 emergency response system.
“This will be the first of many,” Joseph Maressa Jr., co-managing member of Boardwalk Settlement Services, said of the donation.
Meanwhile, Acme, Wawa, Bennett Enterprises and First Bank were all major sponsors of “Hidden in Plain Sight,” two forums held Oct. 12 at the former Sea Isle City Public School that focused on the county’s opioid crisis.
Local parents and grandparents learned of ways to fight drug addiction in their own homes. During the workshops, substance abuse experts showed the parents and grandparents where their children are hiding their drugs – hence the title “Hidden in Plain Sight.”
Parents and grandparents walked through a replica of a teenager’s bedroom – complete with furniture – to see more than 50 hiding places where drugs and paraphernalia could be stashed.
Statistics released by the Cape May County Prosecutor’s Office during the community workshops showed that, through October, there were 155 overdoses and 28 drug deaths in the county so far this year.
As of October, there had been only one reported drug overdose in Sea Isle in 2017 and no deaths. In 2015 and 2016, Sea Isle had three overdoses each year, according to the Prosecutor’s Office.
Sea Isle, a beach town studded with multimillion-dollar oceanfront homes, trendy restaurants and yacht clubs, would hardly seem to be the backdrop for concerns about opioid addiction. However, Desiderio stressed that no one should think that Sea Isle is immune to a drug crisis that has affected “families in every state, in every county and in every community.”
“Here in Sea Isle, we’re not sweeping anything under the rug. We’re hitting it head on,” Desiderio said of the opioid epidemic during a press conference in October.
Joining a trend among law enforcement agencies nationwide, all of Cape May County’s police departments are now using Narcan, an antidote for drug overdoses. County law enforcement officials said the number of overdose deaths would be higher if not for Narcan. Through October, Narcan had been used 115 times in Cape May County to save overdose victims.
