The young woman’s story gives us goosebumps — a life saved that almost went astray. After being injured in a car crash, she had been prescribed opioid painkillers for the pain that wrenched through her broken back. But long after her body was healed, she needed those pills. Addicted to opioids, she got sick if she didn’t get them. And one day, she was out. None in the medicine cabinet, nor her parents’, nor her best friend’s. Her doctor had cut her off. She left the house, headed somewhere she had never been and never thought she would go: She was headed to buy heroin from a place she knew in downtown Eugene.

At the last minute, this young woman turned the car around, went home and told her mom she needed help. She’s spent many years in recovery now, a remarkable success professionally and personally — but often, this story has a different ending.

While these prescription drugs began as a laudable effort to treat pain, their abuse has gripped our community. Prescription drug-related deaths now outnumber heroin and cocaine deaths combined; prescription drug-overdose deaths exceed those that are vehicle-related. Dependence on opioids (hydrocodone, oxycodone), heroin addiction, overdoses and the strain on friends and families are ruining lives, not to mention costing us millions of dollars in health care costs.

On Wednesday, we invite you to join with the Oregon Coalition for Responsible Use of Meds and community leaders at the Central Oregon & Gorge Summit to Reduce Rx Abuse to take action and tackle the opioid addiction epidemic in our communities.

Oregonians are prescribed more than 100 million opioid pain pills every year — more than 25 opioid pills for every man, woman and child. In Oregon, we rank second in the nation for misuse of prescription opioids. In Deschutes County, a whopping 25 percent of residents got a prescription for an opioid like oxycodone and hydrocodone last year.

Our leftover and unused drugs fuel the epidemic of opioid addiction — three-fourths of people who misused prescription drugs report they got started with drugs from a medicine cabinet. And prescription abuse drives heroin addiction: 75 percent of people who abused prescription drugs and used heroin in the past year report that they used prescription drugs first.

While opioids play a vital role in health care — for challenges like treatment of cancer pain and end-of-life care — the time has come to address prescribing practices and educate our community about alternative pain-management methods.

Ending the epidemic will require a full court press with a full team effort. That’s why we are calling on health professionals, insurance companies, health systems, pharmacists, addiction-treatment providers, public health and prevention professionals, law enforcement, educators and community leaders to join us for the Central Oregon & Gorge Summit to Reduce Rx Abuse.

The summit will feature important presentations on initiatives underway in Central Oregon, as well as nationally recognized experts sharing their experience with strategies working in other Oregon communities.

Together, we will draft a comprehensive action plan for:

• Reducing the number of pills in circulation with better prescribing and alternative pain management;

• Better access to proven treatment for addiction;

• Better disposal of leftover and unwanted drugs in our medicine cabinets;

• Education for both prescribers and patients about safer pain management.

The pain of losing a loved one to an accidental overdose never goes away. It’s time we join together to develop an action plan to end prescription drug misuse and abuse.

Join us Wednesday at the Deschutes County Fair & Expo Center 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. to learn the specific challenges and identify solutions to reduce prescription-drug misuse, abuse and overdose in Central Oregon. Register at orcrm.org.

For more information, contact Dwight Holton at dwighth@linesforlife.com or Tammy Baney at tammyb@deschutes.org.

— Tammy Baney is a Deschutes County commissioner. Dwight Holton is CEO of Lines for Life and a former U.S. attorney.