Allegheny County sets OD record
Drug deaths in 2017 expected to top 700
Allegheny County in 2017 broke its record for fatal overdoses, just as it did the year before, and the year before that.
At least 652 people died from drugs last year in the county, with roughly 100 cases still pending until toxicology reports come in, according to data released Tuesday. The year’s total will almost certainly exceed 700, versus 650 last year. The driving force: A seemingly endless variety of fentanyl knockoffs. Is there any good news? “The increase is not as sharp as it was from 2014 to 2015 to 2016,” said Karl Williams, the county’s medical examiner. The drug death total is higher “but maybe not rising at as steep a rate as it was before. Maybe we’re starting to see the effects of the Narcan,” the opioid-reversal drug available in pharmacies and carried by an increasing number of public safety personnel.
Neighborhoods such as Carrick and McKees Rocks are mobilizing to combat the surge in addictions and deaths. County Health Director Karen Hacker said that all but “a handful” of medic, police and fire units now carry Narcan or other brands of naloxone, saving hundreds of lives.
If deaths are the metric, though, fentanyl is still outhustling naloxone. The synthetic opioid, said to come mostly from illicit overseas labs, was found in 75 percent of last year’s overdoses in Allegheny County — up from 63 percent in 2016 and reflecting a steady rise in its share that started in 2014.
Illicit fentanyl was virtually nonexistent in the area prior to 2014, when fatal overdoses in the county hovered below 300 per year and were mostly attributable to heroin. Last year, heroin was found in just 39 percent of overdose victims and cocaine in 37 percent, according to data posted on overdosefreepa.org, a project of the Pennsylvania Opioid Overdose Reduction Technical Assistance Center at the University of Pittsburgh’s School of Pharmacy.
Most overdose victims took multiple drugs, but Dr. Williams reported a marked increase in deaths caused solely by fentanyl. He blamed the incredible potency of some of the fentanyl analogs, including carfentanil.
The statistics are grim, but Dr. Hacker said she’s seeing signs of hope, from the opioid-neutralizing bags available at Walmart to the increasing acceptance of measures ranging from rehab to needle exchange.
“When you start hearing the state and feds talk about this in a different way, it begins to remove a lot of the stigma,” she said. She added that the county is working with municipalities on understanding the opioid problem and exploring street-level solutions. She’s drawing on foundation funding and the expertise of the Congress of Neighboring Communities, or CONNECT, a Pitt-based project that helps the city and 40 nearby suburbs to solve shared problems.
At least four other counties in the region have finalized more overdose autopsies for 2017 than 2016: Butler, 92; Fayette, 67; Lawrence, 54; and Westmoreland, 190.
Of the 652 finalized drug deaths in Allegheny County last year, nearly 71 percent of the deceased were male and nearly 86 percent were white. The age group most represented is 25 to 34 years old. The top ZIP codes are 15212 (North Side), 15136 (McKees Rocks) and 15210 (Carrick and the Hilltop neighborhoods).
The McKees Rocks area last week launched the StoRox Opioid Crisis Summit.
In Pittsburgh’s southern neighborhoods, the South Pittsburgh Opioid Action Coalition has been active since June. On Monday evening, new city Councilman Anthony Coghill of Beechview told some 50 members of the CarrickOverbrook Block Watch that one of his top priorities is “the 5,000-pound elephant in the room, the opioids in Carrick.”
“It’s a terrible tragedy,” he said at Concord K-5 School on overdose-plagued Brownsville Road. “It’s at epidemic levels. And if there’s one good thing, it’s got everybody’s attention now.”
The city and nonprofit partners are preparing to launch a Post-Overdose Response Team, which will encourage people in and around Carrick who survive overdoses to get into treatment. Mayor Bill Peduto last week touted that and other measures and endorsed the concept of safe injection sites at which recovery specialists could nudge users to get help.
Block watch members expressed frustration at the seeming intractability of the problem and called for more grass-roots action. Some said that anonymous letters have been circulating, identifying alleged drug houses and calling on everyone to call 911 or the city’s 311 service line to report the activity.
“There is no secret bullet here. There is no magic pill,” Mr. Coghill said. “We need to go into the high schools” and improve addiction prevention efforts, he said, and to encourage well-managed housing for people in recovery.
He said he recently lost a cousin to heroin.
“Four years from now, if our overdose death rate continues to go up, I’m going to take it personally,” he said.