Millburn, New Jersey, Sept. 06, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: September 6, 2022
MILLBURN — The Knock Out Opioid Abuse Day Learning Series will continue this month with a special webinar focusing on addiction recovery to commemorate National Recovery Month. The webinar will be presented by the Partnership for a Drug-Free New Jersey (PDFNJ) and the Office of the New Jersey Coordinator of Addiction Responses and Enforcement Strategies (NJ CARES), which is responsible for overseeing addiction-fighting efforts across the New Jersey Office of the Attorney General.
The webinar, “Highlighting Addiction Recovery,” will be held at 11 a.m. Thursday, September 8. It will feature introductory comments delivered by Commander Karina D. Aguilar, Assistant Regional Administrator for the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) Region II Office. She will be followed by keynote speaker Mary Beth O’Connor, a person in long-term recovery who served as a federal administrative law judge before retiring from the position in 2020.
O’Connor shares the story of her journey through addiction and recovery, including in her book, “From Junkie to Judge: One Woman’s Triumph Over Trauma and Addiction.”
“September is National Recovery Month, an important time to show support for those people who are in recovery from addiction, as well as the dedication of service providers and communities that help people along their journey to recovery,” PDFNJ Executive Director Angelo Valente said. “This webinar will highlight that recovery is always possible.”
This webinar will be the ninth in the 2022 Knock Out Opioid Abuse Day Learning Series. In 2021, PDFNJ and NJ CARES collaborated on 10 webinars as part of the series. The organizations first combined efforts on the series in 2020 as a strategy to provide education on the opioid crisis in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The series is a branch of Knock Out Opioid Abuse Day, which has been held in New Jersey on October 6 each year since 2016. The statewide single-day initiative is organized by PDFNJ and The Community Coalition for a Safe & Healthy Morris, in cooperation with the New Jersey Division of Mental Health and Addiction Services and the Governor’s Council on Alcoholism and Drug Abuse. The goal of the day is to mobilize the prevention and treatment communities, community leaders and concerned citizens to raise awareness of the potential for dependency on prescribed pain medicine, as well as their link to heroin and fentanyl use in the state.
In 2021, more than 3,000 people in New Jersey died from suspected drug overdoses, a vast majority of which involved some form of opioid including prescription painkillers, heroin and synthetic opioids, such as fentanyl.
The next webinar, “Knock Out Opioid Abuse Day,” will be held at 11 a.m. Thursday, October 6. To learn more about the Knock Out Opioid Abuse Day and to register for this and future webinars, please visit knockoutday.drugfreenj.org.
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Partnership for a Drug-Free New Jersey: Best known for its statewide substance use prevention advertising campaign, the Partnership for a Drug-Free New Jersey is a private not-for-profit coalition of professionals from the communications, corporate and government communities whose collective mission is to reduce demand for illicit drugs in New Jersey through media communication. To date, more than $200 million in broadcast time and print space has been donated to the Partnership’s New Jersey campaign, making it the largest public service advertising campaign in New Jersey’s history. Since its inception, the Partnership has garnered 211 advertising and public relations awards from national, regional and statewide media organizations.
