Coroner struggling with opiate, heroin crisis

Lab levy requested for funding

Coroner Dr. Evans has limited resources and staffing in his department to handle an increased load of cases.

It’s no surprise that Lorain County is in an opiate and heroin crisis, and County Coroner Dr. Stephen Evans has limited resources and staffing in his department to handle an increased load of cases.

Evans told Lorain County Commissioners on Sept. 28 that he’s not just handling opiate and heroin cases. He said he still has to handle deaths from car wrecks, illness, drownings, etc.

The only way he will be able to successfully perform all of his duties is if he receives revenue through a levy, Evans explained.

If the Lorain County Drug/Crime Lab levy is passed during the November election, Evans will get a portion of those funds.

He is hoping county voters will pass the five-year 0.16-mill levy that will appear on the Nov. 8 ballot.

Commissioner Ted Kalo stated the levy would cost the homeowner of a $100,000 home, $5.60 a year.

Commissioner Matt Lundy said a lot of people’s fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers, or whoever it may be, can be saved by this levy and can be able to turn their life around.

County Administrator Jim Cordes said this community needs this levy and it needed it even before the current epidemic.

“This a very needed and very deserved, and the community deserves this service to be better,” Cordes said. “It’s not better because they don’t have the resources, not because they don’t have the talent or the ability to do it. They need money.”

Evans asked that people stop being so quick to judge someone who uses heroin or opiates. He said there’s two type of heroin users: one being someone doing something crazy by being pushed into peer pressure; and someone who had a health issue and received medication from their physician, leading to a more serious addiction.

Some may think they don’t need the levy, Evans said, but he said to imagine if it was a loved one that had a heroin overdose and it takes a while for Evans to arrive to investigate.

He said the number of overdose deaths that occurred in Lorain County have increased and Evans wanted to see what was happening.

So far this year, there have been more than 80 overdose deaths in the county, Evans said. He estimates that by year’s end, the county could have about 140 overdose deaths.

At the end of 2015, Evans said there were 65 overdose deaths in the county.

Demographics have changed when it comes to overdoses, Evans said. The inner city indigent population isn’t the only one now connected to overdoses.

More white middle class suburban population also is affected, especially with females, he said.

In the past, 80 to 90 percent of the overdoses were males because they would do more of the risky things, Evans said.

In 2007, drug overdose deaths became the leading cause of death in Ohio. Evans said Lorain County was “late to the party” and didn’t get hit with the overdoses until 2012.

Now, two to three people die every week in Lorain County from a drug overdose, Evans said. In fact, he said during the Commissioners meeting, he was running late to the meeting because he had to go take care of a drug overdose.

“It’s a constant thing ... I tell people for us, it’s like the waves of the ocean, they just keep coming,” Evans said. “We’re trying to stop it, but we can’t stop these waves.”

There are thousands of people in Lorain County who are having problems with drugs, he said.

Evans gets bothered by the fact that people ask him why he is worrying about the drug addicts in the community because it’s just a “thinning of the herd.”

A lot of people were talking about something they didn’t know anything about, he said.

“It really was disappointing to hear people say this,” Evans said. “Look, if you’re not going to care about the people who are overdosing and about the big drug problem we have, what about everything else? Fifty to 80 percent of our crime in Lorain County and across the United States is drug related.

“If your car’s broken into, it’s probably for drugs. If your house is broken into, it’s probably for drugs. There’s a reason our homicides are way up this year, probably related to drugs.”

Evans said at the most recent fatality review meeting he attends, he and others reviewed car crashes and found that 80 percent of the wrecks occurred because someone was on drugs, under the influence of alcohol, or both.

“So you say, ‘Well how does the drug problem affect me?” he said. “Well, when this drug or alcohol intoxicated individual is coming at you at 55 miles an hour, all of a sudden it does affect you. And so it does affect each and every one of us.”