No remedies coming soon from Gov. Walker’s drug task force

Group, which has met three times, expects more meetings in 2017.

A statewide study committee on drugs in Wisconsin is still trying to figure out which direction to go.

So far, however, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s task force on opioid abuse has met three times now, and one panel member from La Crosse, doesn’t expect large-scale remedies from the team force for a while yet.

“At this point, if there were recommendations made, they would be things that are not considered to be extremely large in the big scheme of this very multifaceted issue,” Jen Rombalski, the head of the La Crosse County health dept. said. “That’s why I think we’ll continue to meet into 2017.”

Rombalski is not surprised that the task force is still taking a broad look at the drug problem, before working on possible solutions.

“This issue is so broad and it covers so many different facets,” she said. “And, if you push in one area, it comes out in another area. I think it needs to be really well thought out before the task force gives any kind of final recommendation.”

Rombalski says people addicted to drugs or recovering from addiction attended last week’s meeting at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse to tell of their own experiences.

“This last meeting was important from my perspective in the health dept. being that we really try and focus on prevention,” Rombalski said. “We had a wide array of speakers who gave really good information to the task force.”

The governor’s office says 80 percent of the drug overdose deaths in Wisconsin during 2014 were caused either by heroin, or by prescription drugs containing opioids.