Local drug deaths worse than ever

Panel urges looking past numbers to the people, lives affected

The toll from the heroin and opioid epidemic has steadily continued in Milwaukee County, with more than 330 drug-related deaths so far this year.

But what’s arguably more striking is the number of people who have suffered an opioid overdose and survived — 2,909 in the city of Milwaukee as of Nov. 9, according to Milwaukee Fire Department data.

The majority of them — nearly 90% — were city residents, Ald. Michael Murphy said Thursday during a panel discussion at Marquette University.

Fire Department data also showed the most concentrated area of nonfatal overdoses currently is the near south side, bordered by National Ave., S. 1st St., Cleveland Ave. and S. 27th St.

Murphy and others on the panel, convened by Marquette’s College of Health Sciences, urged people to look beyond the numbers.

“They’re not statistics,” Murphy said. “These are people that have lives and had good lives.”

“A lot of them just made a simple mistake and went the wrong direction and the problem is, it is very difficult to break away from that addiction,” he said.

The Milwaukee County medical examiner’s office estimates the death toll from overdoses will reach a record 380 by the end of the year — and of those deaths, nearly 85% likely will involve an opioid.

Recognizing the scope and impact on the community is only part of the issue, said John Mantsch, professor and chair of biomedical sciences in the College of Health Sciences.

“Imagine any other condition that anyone is facing where blame is heaped on the victim and the solutions are only advanced in so far as they help the rest of us,” Mantsch said.

Those solutions have typically not considered the well-being of the person “who is suffering the most from addiction,” he added.

Murphy also acknowledged how the discussion has shifted in framing from punishment and criminality to public health. He pointed out how the primary response to the crack cocaine epidemic in the 1980s, which affected African-American and Latino communities, was incarceration.

“The fact that now its it’s affecting mainly (the) Caucasian community, there’s been a paradigm shift in how we look at this disease,” Murphy said.

“I think it’s appropriate that we should be looking at this as a brain disease, but one should not diminish that fact that how we’ve changed our attitude based on who is dying in our community and our country,” he said.