Opioid deaths way up in state

Prescription medications killed more Floridians than heroin, coke in ’16

Prescription drugs killed more people in Florida last year than heroin and cocaine combined, according to the latest state figures.

Drugs were involved in 11,910 deaths statewide last year, according to a report Wednesday from the Florida Medical Examiner’s Commission. Most cases included more than one drug.

The report provides a comprehensive look at a drug epidemic that has ravaged communities in South Florida, where police sometimes race between overdose victims and morgues struggle to keep up with the bodies. The report showed: Opioid-related deaths increased 35 percent over last year and were found in 5,725 deaths.

Cocaine continued to cause more deaths than any other illicit drug, causing 1,769 deaths last year.

Heroin-related deaths increased 31 percent and caused at least 952 deaths.

Fentanyl deaths increased from 705 to 1,390. Related drugs known as fentanyl analogs caused 965 deaths last year.

Prescription drugs accounted for 61 percent of all the narcotics found in drugrelated deaths last year when alcohol was excluded, according to the report.

“The opioid epidemic remains driven by prescription pharmaceutical opioids,” said Jim Hall, epidemiologist for Nova Southeastern University. “We still have a major prescription opioid problem as much as we have a heroin problem.”

Over-the-counter drugs were involved in 6,658 deaths in 2016 — a 24 percent increase over 2015, when 5,364 people died with one or more pharmaceutical drugs in their systems, according to the report.

Among the most common drugs found were opioids such as OxyContin and benzodiazepines such as Xanax and Klonopin.

While the state’s crackdown on pill mills in the early part of the decade reversed the rising numbers of overdose deaths, numbers began climbing again in 2015 in conjunction with a rise in deaths caused by heroin and fentanyl — a cheap, powerful painkiller, Hall said.

Last year in Palm Beach and Broward counties, oxycodone caused 144 deaths, hydrocodone caused 30 deaths and methadone caused 23 deaths.

Prescription opioids have fueled America’s epidemic, causing nearly half of all opioid deaths in the country, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. More than 15,000 people died from prescription opioids in 2015 in the U.S., according to the latest data available.

Often pharmaceutical drugs are used with, or are mixed into, illicit drugs including heroin and cocaine.

The report’s release coincided with an announcement from Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi that she joined 43 other attorneys general in urging Congress to hold opioid manufacturers and distributors accountable for the opioid crisis.

Cities, too, are taking action. Delray Beach has hired a law firm to sue drug manufacturers over the opioid epidemic.

Hall said the 2016 report offered the bleakest news since the state began keeping track of drug-related deaths.

“Much of it we have known, some of it is worse than expected,” Hall said.

“We still have a major prescription opioid problem as much as we have a heroin problem.” Nova Southeastern epidemiologist Jim Hall