Saturday, April 19, 2014
Staff report
YOUNGSTOWN
Unintentional heroin-overdose deaths have been skyrocketing recently in Mahoning County and statewide.
Unintentional prescription-opioid overdose deaths, however, have declined in the county and statewide from 2011 to 2012, according to the Ohio Department of Health.
ODH did not have figures available for 2013.
Perhaps the most-shocking finding in the ODH report issued Friday was that reported heroin-overdose deaths in the county went from one in 2011 to 23 in 2012.
In Mahoning, no heroin-overdose deaths were reported between 2000 and 2006, and there were none in 2010. There were three in 2007, two in 2008 and 11 in 2009.
Statewide, heroin-overdose deaths have risen steadily from 117 in 2006 to 680 in 2012.
After rising from 12 in 2009 to 28 in 2010, prescription-opioid overdose deaths in Mahoning County dropped from 33 in 2011 to 25 in 2012.
Statewide, prescription-opioid overdose deaths rose steadily from 221 in 2003 to 789 in 2011, but dropped almost 12 percent to 697 in 2012.
In Trumbull County, heroin-overdose deaths were in single-digit numbers each year from 2000 until 2011, when there were 19, but fell to 11 in 2012.
In Trumbull, prescription-opioid overdose deaths were in single-digit numbers annually from 2000 through 2003. In 2004, there were 16, and the number has fluctuated since then, falling from 26 in 2010 to 18 in 2011 and nine in 2012.
“It’s clear that the problems we once saw in prescription drugs are, in part, migrating to illegal drugs,” said Lance Himes, interim ODH director.
“Ohio, like the rest of the nation, has seen a surge in the availability and use of heroin,” said Orman Hall, director of the Governor’s Cabinet Opiate Action Team.
Therefore, he said, the state is intensifying its efforts to prevent substance abuse before it starts and make treatment available to addicts.
TRUMBULL RANKS HIGH
Meanwhile, the ODH also released statewide data that shows Trumbull County had the sixth-highest per-capita death rate for accidental drug overdoses in the state between 2007 and 2012.
Mahoning County had the 20th-highest rate over that time period, Columbiana County had the 47th highest.
Over the six years shown in the data, Trumbull County had 278 accidental drug-overdose deaths (22.1 deaths per 100,000 people), compared to 247 in Mahoning County (17.4 deaths per 100,000 people) and 67 in Columbiana County (10.4 deaths per 100,000 people).
Capt. Jeff Orr of the Trumbull County Sheriff’s Office and commander of the county’s top narcotics unit, the Trumbull Ashtabula Group Law Enforcement Task Force, said he feels the problem in Trumbull County has a lot to do with the amount of prescription drugs available.
Orr cited 2011 state statistics showing that county residents had received one of the highest numbers of prescription drugs for pain of any county in the state — 91.5 doses of opioids per person.
The state average was 66.7 doses. Jackson County in southern Ohio had the highest rate at 120.1 doses. Mahoning County’s rate was 77.5, and Columbiana County’s rate was 70.3.
“There’s still a lot of over-prescribing pain medications in Trumbull County,” Orr said.