Meth, coke making Ohio comeback
As heroin and its manmade cousins continue to kill Ohioans at record rates, frustrated law enforcement officials warn of the re-emergence of methamphetamine and cocaine.
“They are making a huge comeback,” said Shawn Bain,
noting the sharp increase — 21 percent — in arrests related to meth.
Bain was a drug task-force commander for the Franklin County sheriff’s office before becoming the Drug Intelligence Officer for the Ohio High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area, a group coordinating the anti-drug efforts of federal, state and local authorities. Bain and two other Ohio HIDTA officials spoke Wednesday at the Franklin County Opiate Crisis Summit.
In the last half of 2015, there were 2,706 reported meth arrests in Ohio. That grew in the first half of 2016 to 3,265. Statistics for cocaine arrests weren’t available.
“All of the major areas in Ohio are seeing a major (meth) increase,” Bain said.
Orman Hall, Ohio HIDTA’s public-health analyst and former executive director of the Fairfield County Alcohol, Drug and Mental Health Board, said there are two major reasons for the increase in the use of stimulants such as meth and cocaine.
A crackdown on prescription medication that combats Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder and similar disorders has led some people to seek replacements for the stimulation formerly provided by those prescription drugs.
“We are using significant amounts of stimulants,” Hall said, noting there was a 30 percent increase from 20102015 in prescriptions written for ADHD medication.
“We’ve got to be vigilant about ADHD medicine in much the same way we were about (prescription) opiates.”
The second reason for the increase of cocaine and meth, Hall and Bain said, is more pragmatic.
“People don’t want to die,” Hall said. “There is widespread knowledge that heroin kills.”
Ohio had 3,050 opiate overdose deaths in 2015, a number officials agree will be topped when 2016 statistics are finalized.
Young people, Bain said, are telling law enforcement personnel that they are terrified about how many friends and relatives have died using heroin, fentanyl or carfentanil.
“They say, ‘I’m scared of (opiates). I’m going to do a drug that won’t kill me right away,’” Bain said.
Despite that, Bain and Hall think heroin and its synthetic relatives will dominate the illicit drug trade for some time.
“They are still the biggest threat we have in Ohio,” Bain said. “I’m just hoping this crisis ends really soon.”
Another drug that law enforcement is watching is gabapentin, sold under the brand name Neurontin. The anti-seizure medicine, often prescribed for epilepsy or to treat nerve pain, was challenging opiates for the number of prescriptions in Ohio late last year, Hall said. Like cocaine and meth, it is a stimulant often snorted, injected or taken orally.
“Its abuse is skyrocketing,” Bain said.