Ohio must fight addiction to reduce OD deaths

Ohio may finally be turning the corner on drug-overdose deaths, and that is exactly the right time to keep the pressure on to fight opioid addiction.

The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently pointed to Ohio as having the largest decrease nationally in drug-overdose deaths.

The distinction is not all that much a cause for celebration, given the state was previously identified as being second only to West Virginia for having the most fatal overdoses per capita. It would have been shameful for the state not to demonstrate movement in the other direction.

Ohio had seen a 20 percent rise in overdose deaths from 2016 with a record number of 4,854 noted in 2017, logging an eighth consecutive year of rising drug deaths.

That unenviable highwater mark represented 14 deaths a day in 2017, or 46.3 deaths for every 1,000 residents, which was more than double the national rate. West Virginia had an even higher rate of 57.8 deaths per 1,000.

Now, thankfully, preliminary data from July 2017 through June 2018 credited Ohio with having the largest drop in drug overdose deaths in the country at 21 percent. And the drop could be even greater, with an Ohio Department of Health report indicating a 34 percent reduction in the first six months of 2018 to the same period of 2017.

But as Gov. Mike Dewine correctly noted last week, this is no time to ease up on years’ worth of efforts to reverse course on the multifaceted attack against the drug-overdose deaths that made Ohio a national poster child for opioid addiction.

One positive development against overdose deaths has been recognition by physicians and their licensing authority that great care must be taken in prescribing drugs for those dealing with chronic pain.

The State Medical Board of Ohio since December has required doctors to at least offer prescriptions for overdose antidote naloxone to patients taking high doses of opioids for chronic pain.

Rising opioid problems were linked to increased use of Oxycontin, initially touted as not addictive when it was approved by the Food and Drug Administration as a slowrelease pain medication in 1995 but identified by 2000 as widely abused.

The Ohio State Medical Association reported in June that its efforts to educate doctors about the dangers of opioid use helped decrease prescriptions by 30 percent from 2012 to 2017. But as prescriptions became harder to obtain, those who came to rely on opioids for pain relief turned increasingly to street drugs and encountered high-danger substances such as fentanyl and even more deadly carfentanil.

The transition from prescription-drug abuse to more use of street drugs underscores what Dewine rightly acknowledges: “You’ve got to look at this as addiction — you can’t look at it as an opioid problem.”

Business leaders who see drug addiction as a major threat to productivity were wise to team up with nonprofits last year to launch a media campaign, “Don’t live in Denial, OH,” to prevent new generations of drug abusers. The Ohio Chamber of Commerce last March put a $5.4 milliona-day cost on medical bills and lost work due to drug overdoses.

Very troubling is that Franklin County was the only major Ohio county not to see drug overdose deaths drop in preliminary data for 2018. More work is needed to reverse that distinction.