DRUG DEATHS SOAR
Fatalities from overdoses rose by 15 percent in 2019 Bern Township Police Patrolman Joshua Santos holds a dose of Narcan that he carries on him to help revive opioid overdose victims. An arrangement of pills of the opioid oxycodone-acetaminophen.
A year ago, preliminary data from the Berks County coroner’s office provided a glimmer of hope to those on the front lines of the opioid crisis that has claimed hundreds of lives in the county in recent years.
The number of drug deaths, including those classified as suicides, dipped below 100 for the first time in two years.
Local and state officials said they were pleased the death statistics appeared to be trending in a positive direction — the county figures mirrored a statewide decline in drug deaths in 2018 from the previous year — but they warned much work remained before anyone could declare, “Mission accomplished.”
Their cautious optimism, at least in Berks, was well placed.
In 2019, according to the coroner’s office, 109 people were confirmed to have died of drug overdoses, and there are still 20 suspected drug deaths pending rulings. That’s a nearly 15% increase over 2018, when there were 95 confirmed drug deaths.
Berks’ 2019 total will likely soar past the high water mark of 118 deaths in 2016 when rulings in the pending cases are made, Chief Deputy Coroner Jonn M. Hollenbach said.
Officials said the spike is frustrating, given the ongoing coordinated efforts to fight the
problem on many fronts. But they say it’s indicative of the complexity of the epidemic and the potency of the synthetic painkiller fentanyl, which is being mixed at a growing frequency with street drugs such as cocaine, methamphetamine and heroin.
“We’re all frustrated with these numbers,” said Stanley Papademetriou, executive director of the Council on Chemical Abuse, the private nonprofit that steers government money to treatment providers in Berks. “It just makes us want to work harder to make them go the other way.”
That doesn’t mean coordinated efforts among law enforcement, drug treatment providers and county and state officials have been wasted, Papademetriou said.
“Every death is important,” he said. “This has been devastating our community for years. There’s no easy answer for this — no magic wand.”
Papademetriou lists some of those efforts that have saved dozens of lives and steered addicts into treatment.
As the county’s designated coordinating agency, COCA last year distributed more than 1,000 nasal kits of the opioid antidote naloxone under Pennsylvania’s 2-year-old Naloxone for First Responders program, Papademetriou said.
First responders are loosely defined under the program as firefighters, probation officers, constables, etc. Even library and school personnel may be considered first responders for the purpose of administering the nasal spray, which reverses the effects of opioid drugs.
The agency also provides
naloxone for free to any resident who comes in for a brief education session.
There’s no data available for how many total doses of naloxone have been administered by private citizens and government workers.
Records kept by Lt. Nelson Ortiz, a county detective who oversees the narcotics unit, showed 20 police departments administered a combined total of 63 naloxone doses through the first nine months of 2018. All resulted in reversals, he said.
Under a program called Blue CARES, which is not unique to Berks, overdosing drug users saved by police with naloxone get an unannounced followup visit to their home by a police officer and a recovery specialist from COCA. The team encourages the person to enter treatment and provides resources to assist them.
Statewide data on drug deaths wasn’t available for this report.
District Attorney John T. Adams noted that about 70% of the confirmed 2019 drug deaths in Berks during the past two years involved fentanyl.
Few fatal overdoses result from common street drugs such as cocaine and methamphetamine taken by themselves, Adams said, but it’s increasingly common today for drug dealers to use fentanyl as a cutting agent in cocaine and even methamphetamine to enhance the high, making their product more attractive to their customers.
On Dec. 9, a mass overdose in West Reading was linked to cocaine laced with fentanyl. Five men became unresponsive in a car immediately after ingesting what they thought was cocaine through their nostrils, police said. Four of them were revived with naloxone administered by West Reading police.
An investigation by
members of the county drug task force began within an hour of the patients arriving by ambulance to Reading Hospital. It led to the arrest two days later of two men on drugtrafficking charges.
The same weekend as the mass overdose in West Reading, there were seven other overdoses, three of them fatal, prompting Adams to declare a public health emergency.
On the prevention front, Adams said, he and other members of the Berks County Opioid Coalition, among them Papademetriou, county Commissioner Kevin Barnhardt and representatives of the coroner’s, meet regularly.
But prevention and education measures are up against a formidable foe: an influx of fentanyl often used as a cutting agent by dealers of street drugs because it produces a better high, increasing the attractiveness of their products.
“When we look at the history of drug enforcement it’s only in the past two or three years that we’ve seen this onslaught of fentanyl,” Adams said.
He said his detectives along with the Reading police vice unit are working hard to identify and arrest dealers and taking fentanyl off the streets.
Last week, Reading detectives seized more than 1,000 packets of fentanyl from a city home along with significant quantities of methamphetamine, cocaine and marijuana.
Adams said most of the fentanyl that enters this country is produced in China and Mexico.
“I think the public needs to be well aware,” the district attorney said, “that any time you take the risk of using street drugs you’re exposing yourself to the possibility that it will be the last drug you’ll ever take.”