Stats reveal record pace for Narcan use, drug ambulance runs

Spike seen in Hub visitors

The city’s first responders logged thousands of ambulance runs and administered lifesaving Narcan at a record pace last year as Boston emerged as a mecca for out-of-town opioid addicts, shocking new statistics show.

Police and medical experts warn that 2018 could be just as bad with no signs the drug epidemic is letting up.

“We’re not out of the woods. It’s a constant challenge with more users from outside the city than inside the city,” Boston po- lice spokesman Sgt.

John Boyle told the Herald.

Ambulance crews recorded a staggering 3,557 “Narcotic Related Illness” transports to city hospitals last year, according to Boston Emergency Medical Services statistics

— up from 2,848 the year before.

Twenty-nine percent of Boston’s narcotic-related ambulance trips were for patients who reported living outside Boston, EMS numbers show — a 58 percent jump over the previous year.

Narcan was administered 1,913 times last year, EMS reported. It was the highest tally for the overdose-reversing drug in the last five years — a factor that is credited with driving the number of opioid deaths down slightly to 187 in 2017 from 193 the year before in Boston, mirroring a similar statewide drop.

Police believe cheap heroin — often laced with the even cheaper synthetic opioid fentanyl — is drawing addicts to Boston.

Fentanyl, said state police spokesman Dave Procopio, is being mixed with heroin to boost potency and profits.

“Some users are actually seeking out fentanyl because it’s more potent,” said Procopio, who added the State Police Detective Unit for Suffolk County reports a majority of recent cases have involved the often deadly drug.

Dr. Peter Chai, medical toxicologist at the Department of Emergency Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, said the deadly additive is fanning the flames of the epidemic.

“Fentanyl is potent. That’s why you’re seeing so many overdoses,” Chai told the Herald yesterday. “It’s a very quick high, shorter than heroin. So they are injecting it more times a day.”

That has public health officials worried about HIV and hepatitis spreading, Chai said.

He also said bogus pills sold as opioids on the Dark Net — and sometimes paid for with bitcoin — are also havens for fentanyl traffickers.

“Fentanyl is in everything these days,” Chai said, agreeing this year is off to a bad start with Lowell and Lawrence also seeing trouble ahead.

Dr. Paul Biddinger, director of the Emergency Department at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, said he’s also “seeing signs” the opioid crisis is not slowing down.

“We don’t know what the cause is. The cost? Fentanyl? Unfortunately, it’s not going away for a while,” he said.

But he did urge “families, loved ones, even bystanders” to buy and train to use Narcan to save overdose victims. Treatment works longterm, he added, but Narcan reverses an OD on the spot.

Mayor Martin J. Walsh’s Office of Recovery Services and 24-hour hotline have been set up to help stem the heroin tide.

But those EMS statistics, obtained by the Herald yesterday, show the Hub is a magnet for heroin users — with Massachusetts Avenue’s so-called Methadone Mile in the South End the epicenter of the epidemic.

‘It’s a very quick high, shorter than heroin. So they are injecting it more times a day.’

— DR. PETER CHAI Brigham and Women’s