Cuyahoga County medical examiner to speak at Senate subcommittee hearing

Cuyahoga Medical Examiner Dr. Thomas Gilson will testify about the fentanyl crisis before a U.S. Senate subcommittee May 25.

Gilson will discuss the number of opioid overdose deaths and the ability of his office to respond to the epidemic.

The “Stopping the Shipment of Synthetic Opioids: Oversight of U.S. Strategy to Combat Illicit Drugs” hearing is being held by the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, is the chairman of the subcommittee.

So far this year, Cuyahoga County has seen 203 fentanyl-related overdose deaths, including fentanyllaced heroin and fentanyllaced cocaine.

The Cuyahoga County Medical Examiner’s Office is projecting there will be 588 heroin/fentanyl related overdose deaths in 2017. If that estimate holds, it will surpass last year’s record 517 heroin/fentanyl overdose deaths in the county.

Lake County also had a record number of overdose deaths in 2016. Fentanyl was a contributing factor in 62 of the county’s 85 deaths. Of those, 40 were from fentanyl alone and another 12 were a combination of fentanyl and heroin.

Fentanyl-related overdose deaths have skyrocketed in recent years and Ohio has seen some of the greatest devastation from the synthetic opioid. Statewide, the number of fentanyl-related overdose deaths jumped from 84 in 2013 to 503 in 2014. That figure then more than doubled to 1,155 in 2015.

The drug is 50 times more powerful than heroin and even 2 milligrams can be fatal, according to the Drug Enforcement Agency.

China is the primary source of fentanyl into the U.S. One of the ways the drug is getting shipped to the United States is through the mail. Earlier this year, Portman reintroduced the Synthetics Trafficking & Overdose Prevention (STOP) Act aimed preventing synthetic drugs coming into the country through the mail system.

His bill would require shipments from foreign countries through the postal system to provide electronic advance data before crossing the U.S. border.

Because of the high volume of mail, U.S. Customs and Border Protection cannot manually scan these packages entering the country. Portman said the bill will allow CBP to better target potential illegal packages.

“It is not a silver bullet,” Portman said on the Senate floor in February. “No one has that silver bullet. But our bill will take away a key tool of drug traffickers and help restrict the supply of these drugs, this poison in our community, again making their prices higher and making them harder to get. With the threat of synthetic heroin getting worse and worse every day, there is urgency to this.”