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Akron Beacon Journal
Deadly dangers lurk
for recreational drug users as opioid crisis evolves
By Amanda Garrett
April 11, 2018
Some Akron police and firefighters this weekend braced for another wave
of overdose deaths after finding three young women dead near what
appeared to be some form of powdered drugs and a rolled-up dollar bill
in a Firestone Park home.
No onslaught followed, however, possibly because the three 20-year-olds
— who were celebrating one of their birthdays — were not apparently
opioid addicts, based on what their families said.
The young women smoked marijuana and may have experimented with other
drugs, but, to their relatives’ knowledge, they were no more than
dabblers who suddenly faced the deadly reality of the opioid crisis.
“I think this is the riskiest time in history for any recreational drug
use, partly because you never know what you’re getting, ” Dr. Doug
Smith said this week. He is a psychiatrist and chief clinical director
at the Summit County’s ADM (alcoholism, drug addiction or mental
illness) board who has watched the opioid crisis evolve.
Chemists, sloppy dealers and drug suppliers who knowingly spike other
drugs with opioids have added extraordinary danger to everything from
marijuana to party drugs that appear to be legitimate prescription
medication but are actually disguised fentanyl.
It will be weeks before tests reveal what drug or drug combinations may
have killed Tara Williams, Ashtyn Andrade and Courtney Collier on
Saturday.
“Sadly, I think we’ll find out their deaths involved opiates they
didn’t know were there. One of them probably thought, ‘I scored some
drugs for the party,’ ” Smith said. “Maybe they thought it was cocaine
and it turned out to be fentanyl, or maybe the powder didn’t kill them
at all. But maybe there was fentanyl in marijuana.”
Smith said recreational users are particularly vulnerable to the impact
of opioids because they have no tolerance. Addicts’ bodies adapt over
time to opiates, so they often need larger and larger doses to keep
from going into withdrawal.
An IV heroin user might never overdose from the same amount or batch of
drugs that would kill a recreational user, he said.
That may explain why there was no rash of overdose deaths last weekend
surrounding whatever killed the young women.
The emerging trend of mixing fentanyl and its chemical cousins with
other street drugs, including methamphetamine, comes at a time when
Summit County has seen a decline in the number of residents suffering
both lethal and nonlethal overdoses.
So far in April, about 2.2 Summit County residents per day have sought
emergency room treatment after overdosing. Treatment for overdoses has
declined steadily since November, when about 4.6 people per day sought
treatment, said Jerry Craig, the ADM board’s executive director.
The Summit County Medical Examiner’s office, meanwhile, this week
reported a sharp decline in overdose deaths between 2016 — the year
elephant tranquilizer carfentanil first hit Summit County in July — and
2017.
In 2016, 340 people died in Summit County after overdosing on drugs. In
2017, 269 people died here from drug overdoses, but that number could
rise to about 270 when still-pending toxicology tests are finished.
Craig said no single factor is likely driving the downward trend.
Among other things, there’s more education and more people carrying
naloxone — the generic name for Narcan, a drug that can reverse opioid
overdoses.
There are also more people getting treatment, including 300 who sought
help after a visit by the county’s fast-response team, a local group of
law enforcement, peer support providers and others who visit homes
after an overdose, Craig said.
He said the numbers may have been influenced by people hoping to stay
safe by switching to other dangerous drugs, citing a Boston Heights
meth lab that was raided last week. Authorities seized 140 pounds of
meth, making it the largest raid of its kind in Ohio.
And it’s not clear the downward trend in overdoses will continue, he
said, particularly because people are always trying new things.
The Ohio Department of Health this week sent out a warning about
synthetic marijuana possibly spiked with rat poison. Between March 10
and April 5, at least 94 people turned up at ERs for unexplained
bleeding, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported.
No cases had been reported so far in Ohio, but the agency wanted health
care providers to know what they might be facing.
Of more immediate concern are area drug dealers trying to make more
money by creating more addicts.
“They’re driven by capitalism,” Smith said. “Opiates are cheap and the
profit margin is crazy through the roof, maybe more than anything else
you can sell.”
The dealers might not add anything to the marijuana or cocaine that a
recreational user buys the first two times, he said. But on the third,
they may slip something in.
“They don’t want to kill customers, however, they’re willing to take a
risk to hook people,” he said.
A recreational cocaine user might only buy cocaine once a month, Smith
said, but an opioid addict will buy drugs four times a day.
The best way to protect yourself is not using illegal drugs.
But if people do, they should always have another person with them who
isn’t using, someone carrying naloxone who can revive them if they
overdose and stop breathing.
It’s not enough to carry a naloxone kit for yourself, he said.
The three women who died over the weekend each could have been holding
a naloxone kit ready to use in one of their hands and none of them
would have lived, he said.
“You need a designated driver,” he said. “They would have needed a
fourth friend there to save their lives.”
Read this and other articles at the Akron Beacon Journal
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