Drug, opioid overdoses increasing in Chesco
Even in affluent Chester County, the national opioid epidemic has taken root with deadly results.
“We are not immune,” Michael G. Noone told a crowd of about 40 at the Kennett Township borough building. “This is something that is very real and very serious here as well.”
Noone, first assistant district attorney for Chester County and a co-chairman of the Chester County Overdose Prevention Task Force, was there with two other speakers to raise community awareness about the scope of the problem nationally and here at home as well.
Drug overdoses have become the leading cause of accidental death in the United States, Noone said, killing 72,000 in 2017.
“That’s a sellout for an Eagles game, dead in a year. Our fellow Americans,” Noone said. And prescription drugs like pharmaceutical opioids, the kind commonly given out to control pain, kill more people than street drugs, Noone said.
Pennsylvania is fourth in the nation in number of deaths, with 5,443 victims in the 12 months ending in July 2017, Noone said. He added that Luzerne County is worse per capita than Manhattan.
And Noone cited rising death rates in recent years in Chester County—75 in 2015, 97 in 2016, 144 in 2017.
In 2016, Pennsylvania coroners and medical examiners reported 4,642 drug-related overdose deaths. The rate of drug-related overdose deaths in Pennsylvania increased from 26.7 per 100,000 in 2015 to 36.5 per 100,000 in 2016, far exceeding the national average. In Chester County, about 20 people for every 100,000 died of drug or opioid overdose in 2016, the latest year for which statistics are available.
Last year showed a downward trend again with 111. But one death is too many, Noone said, and besides killing, the drugs cripple lives, with addicts spending all their money and turning to
crime to fuel an expensive and irresistible habit.
He said that as a member of the legal system he encounters people who would never have committed a crime if not for having become addicted—a choice they never consciously made. Some might have experimented with drugs found in a parent’s medicine cabinet, others might have been given prescription painkillers for a sports injury and become addicted inadvertently.
Once addicted, people start looking for more opioids however they can get them. But individual painkiller pills cost $20 to $30 on the street. Noone said there’s a much cheaper opioid widely available even here — heroin.
It’s a natural next step for painkiller addicts who’ve run through their money. Noone said one reason for the problem today is that pharmaceutical companies years ago marketed synthetic opioids as a kind of miracle drug that could control pain without being habitforming. They promoted the drugs very aggressively, and doctors had no special training that would enable them to view the claims skeptically.
The opioids went flooding out into the marketplace, billions of pills were sold, and before the problem could be recognized the supposedly non-addictive drugs had become a part of people’s lives, with addiction and death the result.
Many states and other municipalities have filed suit against the pharmaceutical companies, Noone said, adding that Chester County recently announced its intention to do so as well. Noone said many individuals and agencies are working in the county to prevent abuse and help the approximately 30,000 county residents recovering from addiction.
There’s a vigorous effort to arrest drug dealers. There are new guidelines for doctors on prescribing opioids, and monitoring to prevent addicts from seeking prescriptions from multiple doctors. School presentations are done to warn students about the dangers of these drugs, Noone said.
The court system has special programs to support recovering addicts. Prescription drop boxes are in place so people can safely, securely dispose of unneeded medicines. And Good Samaritan laws allow people like police to use naloxone, a drug that can reverse overdoses in seconds and save a life hanging in the balance, Noone said. Ethan Healey, the coordinator for Project Naloxone, told the attendees that the drug has saved hundreds of lives in Chester County, and almost always works to reverse the overdose very quickly.
Opioids attach themselves to chemical receptors in the brain and cause a variety of effects, one of which is to slow down breathing. An overdose slows down breathing to the point that the victim suffers cardiac arrest and death. Naloxone separates the drug from the receptor, allowing the victim to recover almost immediately, and has no dangerous side effects.
“It’s actually a pretty miracle-type drug,” Healey said. Project Naloxone is working to educate people on how to recognize overdoses and how to use the drug. The project also aims to get it into the hands of as many people as possible who can use it when needed, from police, fire, and ambulance services to public places such as schools and libraries.
Kate Genthert, a prevention specialist with the county’s Department of Drug and Alcohol Services, described the various ways the county and allied services work to prevent and treat addiction. Anyone seeking help gets evaluated to see what kinds of treatment he or she needs and, often depending on level of insurance, where to go to get it.
Options range from outpatient treatment to a residential detox program, she said. The county strives to make people aware of the problem and ways to address it through lecture programs, literature in public places, outdoor signs, running events and other means, Genthert said.
The goal, she said, was to not just inform people of available services but to break down the stigma associated with addiction and get people talking about it frankly. Genthert emphasized that while recovering from addiction is not easy, it can be done successfully with the kind of ongoing support the services she puts people in touch with can provide.
“Long-term treatment works,” she said.