INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. (Network Indiana): Governor Eric Holcomb says the state is giving heroin addicts in five Indiana counties a new avenue to get well.

Speaking at a press conference in Greenwood this morning, Holcomb and Indiana Family and Social Services Secretary Dr. Jennifer Walthall, said that the state is opening new opioid treatment facilities (OTP’s) in Allen, Johnson, Monroe, Tippecanoe and Vigo counties.

“We’re encouraged that expanding substances abuse services to include services provided by OTP’s will help connect countless Hooisers with treatment and become healthy and productive members of their community,” Walthall says.

She adds that new offices will specialize in methadone treatment to help addicts recovering from opioid addiction, and also if you are an addict and are on Medicaid through the Healthy Indiana Plan, your plan will cover the all the services and treatment you receive.

Governor Holcomb says that the opioid epidemic is a crisis that goes beyond the state of Indiana and that this is a step in many of making good on his campaign promises to fight heroin addiction.

“On the very first day (in office) I signed an executive order. We hit the ground running,” Holcomb said.

With the state seeing an increase of 500-percent in overdoses since the turn of the century, the governor adds that it’s critical that we make efforts to curb that trend.

“If I could only have wish, if I could accomplish on thing in my time. It would be to bend that trajectory, bend that arc down,” Holcomb continued.