The news is heartening and sad at the same time. First, heartening. In the past three years or so, the region has seen a big increase in options available to help opioid addicts and their families.

In the past year alone, new local residential drug rehabilitation facilities have opened, with promise of more to come, including the new Addiction Campuses facility in Cummington, which held an open house Wednesday.

In June, Behavioral Health Network of Springfield opened a much-needed acute detoxification and clinical stabilization facility in the former Lunt Silversmith property on Federal Street in Greenfield. That facility has 64 beds, half for men and half for women, and can take addicts struggling to obtain sobriety right off the street.

The center fills a gap that has existed in the Valley’s addiction treatment network for years. Before that, the closest detox beds were in Brattleboro and Springfield, And there were so few that agonized parents of an addicted teen could spend weeks working the phones to find a program.

In the North Quabbin, a new treatment facility to be operated by Heywood Healthcare, Athol Hospital’s parent, is slated for property in Petersham. That facility is expected to open for day treatment, with 20 beds in January, and another 40-bed adult residential substance abuse treatment program later.

For parents struggling with addiction who have found themselves facing criminal charges, a new Family Drug Court opened this summer in Greenfield District Court. It’s the first of its kind in the state and allows drug offenders to complete a treatment program instead of facing a prosecution following their arraignment. The goal is to treat each addict for the disease and at the same time to help the addict’s family, which can be impacted by sentencing as much as the addict/criminal.

The Center for Human Development in Greenfield also launched its Recovery Coaching program this spring, where substance abusers seeking to obtain or maintain recovery are paired with a person who has done so successfully, and together they work to navigate the problems the client needs to solve to reclaim his or her life and get past substance abuse.

In Northampton, Police Chief Jody Kasper has assigned officers to be part of a Drug Abuse Response Team, or DART, that follows up on recent overdose incidents. Officers keep an eye on people known to be struggling with addiction, not to arrest them but to help keep them alive. Kasper explained in a column in the Gazette’s Health section Tuesday that it is important to take the long view: “We know that the road to recovery is not as simple as one trip to a clinic. We also know one trip could be the first step toward long-term recovery.”  

In local schools, new state legislation designed to combat the opioid epidemic has mandated expanded screening of students for addiction, an effort that grew out of a pilot project in Northampton.

The goal is to intercept students exhibiting risky behavior or who are already misusing addictive substances and to get them help and support as early as possible. Adolescent brains are particularly vulnerable to the deleterious effects of addictive drugs, studies have shown. So, this is a good thing.

Hampshire HOPE and the Opioid Task Force of Franklin County and the North Quabbin region are doing groundbreaking work. In Franklin County, a new community resource coordinator will soon help people navigate the web of addiction treatment services in the region more easily.

The region’s next steps will be to increase longer-term treatment options, including sober, substance-free housing and transitional sober housing options. This will extend the continuum of care that users need to break the bonds of addiction.

So, what’s the sad news? That we as a community, state and nation find ourselves here in the first place, that we have to exert all this energy, money and time on the problem of addiction — and will for years to come before we see the passage of this scourge.

We hope our community, supported by state and federal governments, will maintain this support for the long haul.