41st District Judge Linda Davis speaks to the audience about a family member’s addiction to drugs.

DEARBORN
HEIGHTS  – A coalition aimed at tacking
substance abuse and the stigmas it casts on the Arab American community kicked
off on a powerful note on Tuesday, May 10.

SAFE
(Safety, Addiction, Family, Education) held its first town hall meeting at HYPE
Athletics, with the participation of health professionals, judicial officials,
educators and hundreds of community members.

The
coalition’s executive board includes SAFE Executive Director Hassan Abdallah;
HYPE CEO Ali Sayed; pharmacist Ghada Abdallah; Dr. Ali Dabaja, a physician at
Beaumont Hospital and Zainab Jaafar-Chami, owner of a local pharmacy.

SAFE’s
executive board was among a guest of panelists that included Ed Jouney, a
clinical instructor at the University of Michigan; 41st District Judge Linda
Davis; 20th District Judge David Turfe; Darlene Owens, director of Substance
Abuse Disorders and Youssef Mosallam, executive director of Student Achievement
at Dearborn Schools.

Hassan
Abdallah kicked off the forum by explaining why it’s crucial to launch an
initiative aimed at shedding light on substance abuse.

“We
are far beyond needing to lose the life of a loved one to understand that we
need to do something about this,” he said. “We cannot continue to cry at
funerals and say ‘I wish I would have.’ SAFE is about breaking the cultural
barriers we have about this issue.”

Drug
abuse has been attributed as the root cause of a string of deaths that have
occurred in the Arab American community over the last year. However, families
still have difficulties addressing addiction because they fear social scrutiny.

Judge
Davis shared a powerful story about her daughter’s struggle with heroin and the
strenuous steps it took for her to recover.

Davis
said as a mother, she was ashamed to go public with her daughter’s addiction.

“I
was literally watching her die in front of me,” Davis said. “I was totally
helpless. I didn’t know what to do. We sent her from one treatment center to
another. None of them seemed to make a difference. She went from being a
healthy teenage girl to an 80-pound skeleton whose eyes were hollow. She was
unrecognizable to me.”

Davis
told the crowd that when a family member is battling addiction, it impacts
everyone in the household. She said she endured many months of sleepless nights
worrying about her daughter.

Davis
said it took her a while to work up the courage to go public with her
daughter’s struggle. However, she decided to do it in hopes of impacting other
families who may be facing similar obstacles. Once she did so, she realized
that it was a therapeutic avenue for her.

“I
want you to understand what a serious family disease this is,” Davis said. “I
will tell you that this was the most embarrassing thing that has happened in my
life. I still cringe when I have to stand up in front of a group of strangers
and talk about this. We are afraid of being ostracized and no one would
understand. As a result of that, kids are dying and families are crumbling
right before our very eyes.”

During
the panel’s Q&A session, Lobna Fakih, a local doctor and parent who was in
the audience, said that students often are aware of peers who are drug abusers, but they choose
not to report it to any authorities.

She
cited her son’s friend as an example. He died shortly after graduating high
school last year and was a known drug addict. Yet none of his friends ever
stepped in to prevent him from harming himself.

“I
want to say something to the kids that are out here,” Fakih said. “You know who
the kids are that are taking drugs. Some of these kids who are not using drugs
see it out there and they are still quiet. We really need to give them a source
they can go to.”

Another local parent asked educators if they would be willing to randomly drug test their students. 

Mosallam
said that the law does not allow Dearborn Schools to randomly drug test its
students. However, he noted that if a minor is identified as a drug user, the
school takes necessary steps to address it to the family.

He
said they’ve conducted home visits with families of students, as well as held
seminars to assist parents in identifying drug abuse.

“Whenever
there is a concern, we bring that concern to the family,” Mosallam said. “As a
community we have to understand that when we bring those conversations to the
family, we need to work together to not look at it as a taboo or as a stigma.”

Many
community members called for educators, religious institutions and health
professionals to take preventive measures to limit drug abuse.

However,  Jouney said that more than 23 million
Americans are drug addicts and that it’s already far too embedded into society
to take preventive steps. He instead challenged the community to be open with
the issue and called for leaders to educate families on the resources they
could take to get help.

“This
is not something that we will be able to prevent,” Jouney said. “This is
something that is ubiquitous throughout society. Our community is not an
exception. We have to understand that. No religious or spiritual group is going
to bring an end to this illness.”

Ghada
Abdallah said that many pharmacists are buckling down on prescriptions to
ensure that patients aren’t abusing drugs. She said that she’s contacted the
DEA on multiple occasions to report doctors who she suspects are writing out
prescriptions irresponsibly.

“I
just want to reassure everyone in the community that the majority of
pharmacists are doing the right thing,” she said. “We verify prescriptions to
make sure they are real. We verify them with the doctors…we question patients. There
are so many steps we follow to make sure we are doing the right thing.”

She
noted that many consumers end up obtaining their drugs from patients who
already have prescriptions. Those patients recklessly disburse their
medications to family members and friends, which leads to a pattern of abuse.

She
urged all pharmacies to set up a drop off box in their retail stores to allow
patients to dispose of their medications once they are done using them.

Dabaja
said physicians need to hold their healthcare networks accountable, citing
corporate greed as one of the leading factors of substance abuse.

“This
is the moment to ask how has this epidemic been caused by the uncontrollable
culture of consumerism and corporate interests,” Dabaja said. “I think
hospitals are now catching on to this trend of abuse. I know each hospital
system is working diligently to find solutions, but it really is a little too
late.”

Barbara
W. Rossmann, president and chief executive officer of Henry Ford Macomb
Hospitals, said the company has recently implemented new policies in how a
physician can administer prescriptions.

“We’ve
changed prescribing habits in our ER,” Rossmann said. “All of our physician
prescribers can only administer an X number of opioids to any person that comes
through the ER and we do not do refills. Our physicians can only order
according to protocol. And we are now working with our surgical teams to get
them to the same place.”

The
members of SAFE’s executive board said they were surprised by the turnout of
the event, which included more than 250 community members and elected
officials. The coalition is planning more events with the assistance of local
mosques for the upcoming month of Ramadan.

“Seeing community members being
engaged in the dialogue was inspiring and is a huge testament to how much of a
difference we can make just by being proactive,” Hassan Abdallah said.

To
learn more about the group, visit its Facebook group at
https://www.facebook.com/safesubstanceabusecoalition/?fref=ts