SALEM Several agencies in Columbiana County are collaborating to host an event geared towards connecting people with addiction recovery resources. 

At the first BRIDGE Day in Salem, local agencies, law enforcement and community partners offered resources including health screenings, referrals to addiction counseling, job placement and legal aid. Free meals were also served at the event, which was open to all members of the community. 

The executive director of the county’s Mental Health and Recovery Services Board, Lori Colian, said pre-arranged treatment beds were even made available so people could sign up for substance abuse treatment on the spot. 

“Every year that we've done this so far, we've at least had one or two people that actually take advantage,” Colian said. “The first year we did in particular, we had a real good success story. The young lady went [to treatment] from BRIDGE Day, and she is still doing well today and in recovery and sober living.”

Operation BRIDGE, short for Bridging Recovery & Interdiction Data Gathering Enforcement, is a statewide initiative supported by the Ohio Department of Public Safety as well as Recovery Ohio. It encourages collaboration between law enforcement and behavioral health providers in tackling substance abuse issues.

Colian said the event is designed to help not only those struggling with addiction themselves, but also their friends, family and community members. 

“There's information here, and it's a safe place to come to get that information,” Colian said. 

But law enforcement had a noticeable presence at the event, and those struggling with addiction don’t always trust law enforcement, Detective Jesse Smith acknowledged. 

“People can be apprehensive to work with law enforcement, because everybody just thinks we're just trying to put people in jail — and that may have been kind of the case at one point in time, but not so much anymore,” Smith, director of the Columbiana County Drug Task Force, said. 

“We do have a drug problem in this county, just like every other county in the entire country, but we've realized that we can't just arrest our way out of this problem,” he added. 

Colian and Smith said in Columbiana County, police have collaborated with community service providers to meet people where they are. 

“The guys in our unit, we go out with Mobile Crisis Response and some peer supporters [and] we go hit some houses that we know would maybe benefit from stuff,” Smith said. “We bring food with us, we bring Narcan, we bring hygiene kits, just to try and connect to people on their doorstep.”

Their efforts could be having an impact — provisional data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows a 45% decrease in overdose deaths in the county from December 2021 to December 2024.

The board will hold the second BRIDGE Day Thursday in East Liverpool, near the Way Station on closed blocks of West Fifth Street, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.