Ohio budget cuts hurt efforts to curb accidental overdoses

Associated Press

Treatment providers aren’t sure where they will find money to combat an epidemic of prescription painkiller addictions and overdoses as budget cuts lead to slashed services.

Accidental drug overdoses now kill more people in Ohio than motor vehicle crashes.

“We’ve never seen anything quite like the opiate problem, and in the 20 years I’ve been here we’ve never experienced anything like the state reductions,” said Orman Hall, executive director of the Fairfield County Alcohol, Drug Abuse and Mental Health Board. His agency has lost about 20 percent of its non- Medicaid funding.

The Recovery Center in Lancaster and the Marion Area Counseling Center also are trying to cope with budget constraints while waiting lists grow of people seeking help.

Traffic deaths statewide in 2008 dropped more than 5 percent to 1,191, while overdose deaths climbed 8.6 percent to 1,458, according to the Ohio State Highway Patrol and the Ohio Department of Health.

Total 2009 numbers aren’t available yet, but some counties are reporting startling increases through the first nine months of this year, according to a Newspaper Network of Central Ohio series on Ohio’s accidental overdose problem.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported in September the drug-related death rate roughly doubled from the late 1990s to 2006.

The number of states in which drug-related deaths have overtaken traffic fatalities has gone from eight in 2003 to 12 in 2005, and 16, including Ohio, in 2006.