Sometimes THE TRUTH is hard to recognize
Overdose deaths increased by more than one third in Western Pennsylvania, DEA says
http://triblive.com/news/allegheny/10781143-74/heroin-county-drug
This is a article mostly stating FACTS except they make one statement in the article While good statistics aren’t available … the continue to include MAY… MIGHT.. and their GOAL is to HOPEFULLY stop the increase in deaths from drug overdoses… Really not clear which drugs are the real cause of the overdoses. Having another 3400 drug overdose deaths in 2016 would be considered a VICTORY ? Of course, most statements are being made by the DEA or a director for a Rehab center.
If they are administering more and more Naloxone and deaths are increasing… Naloxone is NOT PREVENTING OD DEATHS… it is just postponing it !
Why hasn’t those involved with the war on drugs.. look at it like we do terrorists… we have to be 100% correct to prevent a terrorist from killing some of us.. because the terrorist only has to be correct ONCE to kill innocent people.
The Naloxone prgm – to prevent OD deaths – have to be there 100% of the time.. and when you hear bureaucrats “glad-handing” each other when they have revived a single person from dying from a OD numerous times, sometimes in a single day.
Is the Naloxone prgm just a “catch or release” process… or is it more of just a mirage of something being done to save/help people who suffers from the mental health disease of addictive personality disorder ?
Overdose deaths increased by more than a third in most Western Pennsylvania counties last year with heroin and other opioids driving the numbers, according to a new government report.
More people are dying because more people are abusing drugs, said Dr. Neil A. Capretto, medical director for Gateway Rehabilitation.
“Nearly every day, there’s more people using opioids than there were the day before…,” he said. “It’s like a tsunami of addiction.”
Statewide, drug-related overdose deaths increase by about 23 percent to 3,383 deaths in 2015, according to an analysis by the Drug Enforcement Administration.
Fatal overdoses increased by 37 percent to 422 in Allegheny County and by 43 percent to 126 in Westmoreland County, according to the report.
Westmoreland County has implemented several programs in the last year such as a drug court and an early diversion program at the magistrate level, naloxone training and drug use prevention programs, said Tim Phillips, director of the county’s Drug Overdose Task Force.
“Once we get all these pieces in place, we hope to at least see it level off,” he said.
The continued increase in overdose deaths drives home the need to get naloxone, commonly sold under the brand name Narcan, in as many hands as possible, Phillips said. Rapid administration of naloxone can keep people from dying from an overdose.
While good statistics aren’t available, the increased use of naloxone by first responders has probably cut the number of overdose deaths in Allegheny County by more than 100 people, Capretto said.
In addition to an increased number of people using heroin and opioids, some of the factors driving the increase in deaths include the use of fentanyl as a cutting agent or, increasingly, as a substitute for heroin, he said.
Heroin comes from poppy plants, so drug cartels have to grow and harvest the plants before they can sell it. Fentanyl is both a stronger drug and a cheaper one that’s made in laboratories, Capretto said.
Autopsies statewide found heroin or an opioid in 81 percent of the people who died of an overdose in 2015, according to the DEA. The presence of fentanyl increased by 93 percent and this increase was “concentrated in several southwestern counties,” the report says.
“The abuse of illicit street drugs and diverted pharmaceuticals continues to take too many lives and destroys families across Pennsylvania and the nation at large,” said Gary Tuggle, special agent of the DEA’s Philadelphia Field Division, which covers the state.
The DEA is increasingly seeing fentanyl being passed off as heroin, said DEA spokesman Patrick Trainor.
While he hasn’t run into a dealer selling fentanyl as heroin, it’s frequently mixed with heroin, and there’s not much quality control in the drug trade, said Westmoreland County Detective Tony Marcocci.
Testing bags from the same batch will show that one stamp bag has a mix while another will be nearly pure fentanyl, he said.
For an individual stamp bag, “there no telling what percentage it is,” Marcocci said.
The rise of heroin and opioids is driven by peer pressure and myths, such as the mistaken belief that snorting heroin or opioids keeps people from getting addicted, he said.
“We see some individuals who begin snorting heroin, become addicted to it and start injecting it because it’s cheaper,” he said.
Injecting is cheaper because the user gets a stronger effect for the same dose, Marcocci said. Other people start on pain medications and switch to heroin for the same reason, he said.
“The sad reality is that it’s affecting more and more people from various lifestyles,” Marcocci said. “It knows no barrier.”
A focus in Allegheny County is gathering more information about the people using heroin and opioids to see how to prevent or break their addictions, said Dr. Karen Hacker, director of the county’s health department.
“What we’re trying to figure out is where the interventions are going to have an effect,” she said. A report on the issue should be coming out soon, she said.
While police departments have been reluctant to start carrying naloxone, an increasing number such as Monroeville, Pitcairn and Brentwood have done so, she said. A Pittsburgh police spokeswoman couldn’t be reached for comment.
The county is also trying to get doctors who prescribe opioids to include naloxone as a safety net, Hacker said.
Westmoreland and Allegheny counties have standing orders allowing pharmacies to sell naloxone to anyone without a prescription. Neither is sure how many people are taking advantage of that.
“Getting it out there to the people who need it is a challenge,” Hacker said.
Brian Bowling is a Tribune-Review staff writer. Reach him at 412-325-4301 or bbowling@tribweb.com.
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