Alicia Hunt drives her Chevrolet Silverado 300 miles a week catering to clients in Robeson County, North Carolina. She takes them to meetings and to the hospital. She responds to overdoses. She drives for hours every day to ensure that they are receiving the right care. She keeps her cellphone on 24/7, ensuring that she is accessible to anyone, whenever they are in need.
Hunt, a Robeson County native and a part of the Lumbee Tribe, is a peer support specialist and a health educator at the Robeson County Health Department. She is also the program director of Stop the Pains of Substance Abuse. Hunt has a personal understanding of why people find their way to using drugs, and in some cases, rely on them.
Hunt has previously suffered from substance use disorder (SUD) herself, hence the reason she makes herself available even during her personal time: she understands what they are going through.
Robeson County is a small county in southeastern North Carolina that has been previously ranked as one of the counties in the state with the topmost substance abuse issues. These numbers have recently plummeted.
Hunt believes that President Trump can contribute to the continued decrease of substance abuse in the county’s overdoses because of his policies, which encourage prevention, recovery and combating trafficking.
Trump has won Robeson County two election cycles in a row, with a higher percentage in 2024 than the last election, according to Chris Cooper, a political science professor at Western Carolina University.
“Biggest movers towards Trump were Robeson, Gates, and Sampson at 4.6, 4.0, and 3.6,” Cooper posted on X.
In an Agenda47 video, Trump addressed ending the drug addiction crisis in America.
“I will permanently designate fentanyl as a federally controlled substance,” said Trump. “Attacking the supply of these deadly drugs will be just the beginning. We must do more to end the scourge of addiction here at home.”
According to the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services, there have been 223 overdose emergency department visits in the last 12 months compared to 302 from January to September 2023. Although there is a decrease, the numbers are still amongst the highest rates of medication or drug overdose emergency department visits among North Carolina counties according to the North Carolina Injury and Violence Prevention Branch.
“Our county could benefit sufficiently,” Hunt said about Trump’s re-election. She detailed his policies regarding reducing the availability of illicit drugs in the United States, while promoting naloxone which helps treat overdose patients, in addition to limiting the unnecessary use of prescription drugs.
“That’s where our heaviest drug use comes from, is opioids,” said Hunt. She believes there is an importance of questioning alternatives because of how detrimental the opioids are to the county and state.
The decline in overdose cases can be considered to be in association with the recent $15 million that was put towards the county after multiple state and local governments sued drug manufacturers and distributors for their role in the opioid addiction crisis.
As a result, over $50 billion has been distributed, giving North Carolina $1.5 billion, and then Robeson County receiving $16 million from 2022 through 2038. The county has already been given $1.1 million for the 2022-2023 fiscal year, $2.4 million for the 2023-2024 fiscal year and $1.3 million for this current fiscal year, according to the NC Opioid Settlement website.
Latasha Murray, the Director of the Robeson County Healthcare Care Corporation who has been selected to participate in the NC Opioid Settlement Academy, said that this money is being allocated to the county to provide resources.
“The funds that have been distributed include funding for naloxone distribution, treatment services in the community,” said Murray. “It’s been used to assist with some other community services such as peer support specialists.”
She added that the county worked with the community to find out what was needed and helped organizations like the Robeson Consortium — an organization made up of over 50 organizations who are working to address the opioid epidemic and community.
“The best resource and number one resource is to refer them out for other resources,” said Hunt. “Unfortunately our county does not offer the resources that they need. That has a lot to do with poverty.”
Robeson County is also one the poorest counties in North Carolina, ranking alongside Washington County and Bladen County, according to a 24/7 Wall Street report that used data from the U.S. Census Bureau. This is another reason Hunt travels for miles and hours throughout the week, bringing people to other resources and facilities in Charlotte, Wilmington, Winston-Salem and Greensboro, among other cities.
“We’re just a poor community,” said Phillip Stephens, the Chairman of the Republican Party in Robeson County. “We’re very rural. Because we’re so rural, tri-racial community, a lot of poverty … it’s hard for us to get some of the resources that we need.”
Stephens added that the lack of funding impacts the schools in the county — places where children can be informed about public health issues including substance abuse disorders, but aren’t.
Hunt’s daughter, who attends one of the local high schools, is the one who informs her classmates and peers about drug usage, not the school.
If children do not learn the severity of these issues, it can lead them to addiction, according to the National Association of Social Workers (NASW).
“Prevention efforts are key in responding to the opioid crisis in the school system,” states the NASW. “Prevention efforts should encourage student and school connectedness.”
Hunt said that drug use among school age children has become a norm. She detailed an encounter of eight Robeson County middle schoolers who were hospitalized after being exposed to fentanyl in school. Some parents, she said, engage with their children in drugs they use either in front of them or with them. There are also students who put synthetic drugs in vapes.
Another commonality in the county is that drugs falsely appear under the guise of a prescription drug according to Hunt. She refers to these as “counterfeit prescription” pills which are created in a machine called a pill press.
“I can make a Xanax, and you get prescribed a Xanax from a pharmacy in a bottle and my Xanax looks just like yours, it’s pressed with the same numbers, and color letters.” Hunt explained.
Mental health is another factor that may encourage drug use not only in children but adults as well, according to Hunt. The National Child Traumatic Stress Network recognizes that mental health and substance abuse are often associated with one another. In their surveys of adolescents receiving treatment for substance abuse, more than 70% of the patients had been exposed to trauma.
“We use substances to dislocate our feelings and our thoughts and situations,” Hunt said, speaking about those struggling with SUD. She said many of her clients have underlying mental health illnesses they don’t know about, which is what happened to her when she found out later that she had bipolar disorder.
“It can be a mental health disorder or illness that we are struggling with and we don’t realize it because we haven’t been properly diagnosed and so we turn to drug use,” Hunt explained.
Although the overdose rate has gone down, there are still many unreported cases, according to Hunt.
“We have overdoses that aren’t reported all the time,” Hunt said, adding that the connection to so many cases being unreported is based on the county being “bible built.” The stigma infers that with Christian beliefs, it is the person’s personal decision to do drugs based on lack of education, and that this decision should remain in one’s household, not shared with anyone.
“You know what you are doing. You are wrong. You can say no. You choose to do this,” Hunt said is the bible built mentality — rather than trying to seek help.
Hunt is confident that Trump will help Robeson County, including those who feel like they cannot report overdoses due to the bible built stigma.
