2018 saw slight drop in opioid deaths

WEST CHESTER >> Deaths from accidental opioid overdose declined slightly in Chester County in 2018, according to figures recently released by the county Coroner’s Office.

But that decrease comes as cold comfort for those who have lost a close relative, family friend, or neighborhood acquaintance to the addiction epidemic, and will not dampen the efforts by county officials to combat what many refer to as a modern drug crisis.

“Any (opioid) death is one too many deaths in Chester County,” commissioners’ Chairwoman Michelle Kichline said in an interview Monday about the 2018 figures and the county’s work on education, prevention, and community protection. “As county commissioners, one of the major things my colleagues and I deal with is our concern with the health of our citizens.

“It is a very complex issue,” Kichline said, but one that reaches across the spectrum of the county’s multiple cultural and social levels. At a recent county Health Department event at which the anti-overdose drug Naloxone was distributed free to 500 families and individuals, Kichline said those responding came from all walks of life.

“You begin to see that this is not socio-economically driven” she said, countering the narrative that the epidemic affects mostly economically distressed communities like those in Ohio, West Virginia, and Vermont. “It is something that affects everyone, everywhere” in the county.

According to county Coroner Dr. Christine VandePol, a member of the county’s Overdose Prevention Task Force, through November there had been 107 drug overdose deaths in the county, with the manner of death determined to be suicide in six cases and accidental in 101 cases. She

said full statistics for 2018 are not yet available pending December data, but for all of 2017, the county experienced 153 drug overdose deaths, including nine suicides and 144 accidental deaths.

In June, her office released data on for the first half of 2018, showing that 59 people died from drug overdose, with 57 deaths determined to be accidental and two due to suicide. The majority of those who

died from drug overdose were white men, ages 25 to 44. Since 2015, 367 people in the county have died from a drug overdose. The majority of those who died from drug overdose were white men, ages 25 to 44.

As in previous years, white men continued to be the largest demographic group experiencing a fatal drug overdose, VandePol said, noting that approximately 69 percent of cases were in men and 89 percent were in white men or women. There was a slight trend toward younger age groups, with the largest single number of deaths

(28) in the 25-34 year-old age range.

Opioids of any kind continued to be the most common drug found on toxicological tests, present in approximately 84 percent of drug overdose deaths in 2018 compared with 87.6 percent in 2017, the coroner said. The majority of these opioids were fentanyl , fentanyl-related-substances, or non-prescription synthetic opioids.

“The data we have available so far for 2018 show an encouraging trend towards fewer drug overdose deaths in Chester County, including opioid-related overdose

deaths,” VandePol said in a news release. “The mortality data doesn’t tell us, of course, whether the number of people with opioid or other drug addictions is decreasing. Even if it is not, at least more are surviving and having the opportunity to recover.

“People are still falling through certain cracks. For example, we’ve seen a number of overdose deaths occurring within days of release from incarceration or inpatient rehab. This kind of information tells us where there is more work to be done in further decreasing overdose deaths,” she said.

Kichline also emphasized that many of the anecdotal evidence of overdose deaths shows that many include those young people who have just been released from rehab, and slip once when they are most vulnerable to “high-octane” doses of heroin that contain fentanyl.

“What you see are young people struggling,” she said, recalling that in her home municipality of Tredyffrin, two young people had died of overdose in the past six months. “They come out of rehab and think they can take it just one time. There needs to be some way to help them when they come home, and we keep asking ourselves, ‘How do you keep them away.’”

In recent months, some suburban counties in the Philadelphia area have joined larger lawsuits against the manufacturers of opioids, blaming them for the high costs in human deaths and government services from health care to law enforcement to prisons to deal with the epidemic.

In 2017, Delaware County

declared war on drug manufacturers and their doctors, filing suit against 11 suppliers of pain killers for what they claimed is their role in the opioid epidemic in the county.

Delaware County officials held a press conference to announce the unprecedented legal filing against 11 major drug suppliers of opioids and their consulting physicians, who they claim have for decades “conspired to deceitfully promote and market the benefits of using opioids to treat chronic pain.” Bucks County followed with its own lawsuit last year. Chester County has yet to file such a claim.

In 2017, Delaware County had 167 drug-related deaths, with 145 of those deaths being opioid-related. The federal government estimates that 89 people die every day from an opioid-related overdose in the U.S., and Pennsylvania is among the highest incidence areas for opioidrelated abuse and overdose.