The News Herald (Willoughby, OH)
Ohio tops in overdose deaths
Overdose deaths increased 39 percent in 12-months
Ohio has been one of the states hit hardest by the opioid epidemic, and between July 2016 and July 2017, the state got hit even harder.
According to a new provisional report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Ohio’s overdose death rate climbed 39 percent over that period.
In that 12-month stretch, the state had 5,256 overdose deaths fueled largely by the opioid crisis. There were 3,763 overdose deaths in the preceding 12-month period.
That period marks the time carfentanil first started appearing in Ohio. Carfentanil is 100 times more potent than fentanyl, which is itself 50 times more potent than heroin
Carfentanil was first developed in the 1970s and is used legally as a sedative
for elephants and large animals. The presence of carfentanil has been felt in Lake County. The county’s crime lab had 40 positive tests in 2016, first noted in September of that year. That jumped to 153 cases
in 2017 and drug cases received during the last quarter of the year have yet to be processed.
Ohio’s 39 percent increase from July 2016 to July 2017 was the third largest increase percentage nationwide.
It trailed only Pennsylvania (43.4) and Florida (39.4).
Nationally, there was a 14.4 percent increase in drug overdose deaths over that period, an increase from 58,525 to 66,972.
The Ohio Council of Behavioral Health & Family Service Providers said the state has much work to do to stem the tide of overdose deaths.
“Ohio can and must do better to end the needless
suffering caused by the grip of addiction and overdose deaths,” CEO Lori Criss said. “We need a full continuum of treatment and recovery services in every community, and we need prevention and early intervention in every school.”
Lake County Crime Lab also saw an assortment of fentanyl analogues — socalled “designer fentanyl” — for the first time in 2017. The most common among those were despropionyl fentanyl and acryl fentanyl, with 40 and 34 positive tests, respectively, during the first nine months of the year.
The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration this month placed all illicit fentanyl analogues not already regulated by the Controlled Substance Act into Schedule I. This is the category for substances with no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse. The DEA’s scheduling is for two years with the possibility of a one-year extension.
DEA Acting Administrator Robert W. Patterson said scheduling the whole class of fentanyl substances simultaneously will help federal agents and prosecutors take “swift and necessary action against those bringing this poison into our communities.”