ST. MARYS — A startling new reports says heroin use has skyrocketed across Pennsylvania in recent years, including in Elk County, which bears one of the highest fatal overdose rates in the state.
According to the newly released report by the Center for Rural Pennsylvania, Elk County held the state’s 13th highest number of overdose deaths — tied with Schuylkill County — with 13.7 residents per 100,000 killed by drugs between 2007 and 2011.
The state average is 12.7 per 100,000.
McKean and Potter counties fell below that figure with 11.5 and 11.7 drug deaths per 100,000, respectively. Meanwhile, the report indicates that Cameron County saw 7.7 overdose deaths per 100,000, a statistically unreliable number.
On Monday, Cameron County coroner Ted Walters clarified that he has yet to see an overdose patient in 28 years with the county.
Walters explained that without a hospital to treat them, the municipality’s overdose patients are often transported to nearby St. Marys for treatment where, by law, the Elk County coroner is called if the patient dies.
This arrangement may have resulted in Cameron County drug deaths being attributed to Elk County totals.
But Walters said the absence of recorded incidents, or reliable data, does not speak to an absent drug problem in Cameron County, claiming Emporium Borough employees retrieve dirty needles left by drug users in public streets and spaces on a daily basis.
“We’ve always had drug problem in Emporium, but it seems to be getting worse because the drugs are easier to get now,” Walters said.
In addition, Walters said overdose deaths can often be due to a lack of knowledge about what drugs can be combined and their effects.
“A lot of kids don’t know what mixes,” Walters added.
In a 2013 interview with The Era, Elk County coroner Michelle Muccio said mixing drugs was commonplace in overdose victims, with a majority involving prescription opioids, painkillers like oxycodone and hydromorphone, as well as designer drugs and opiates like heroin.
“Once addicted they’ll really take anything,” Muccio explained.
For his part, Potter County coroner Kevin Dusenbury said the presence of multiple substances and pre-existing health conditions in a user can make determining the exact cause of death difficult.
“Sometimes there’s not lethal levels but if you add three or four of them in, underlying medical plays a big part,” Dusenbury said.
Between 2012 and 2013, Elk County 911 received 61 drug overdose calls, with no less than five fatal overdoses.
Muccio described the level of prescription drug abuse as “alarming.”
Authorities and lawmakers agreed, prompting comprehensive and unrelenting crackdowns at the federal, state and local levels.
Those efforts proved successful, so much so that prescription painkiller supplies grew increasingly scarce. But rather than eliminating the need, tougher drug laws and ramped up enforcement only lessened the supply. Law enforcement officers like those in Elk County describe the phenomena as a game of whack-a-mole in which successful suppression of an illicit drug leads to the resurgence of another.
With prescription drug supplies choked off, users already addicted turned increasingly to heroin, a cheaper, stronger and plentiful drug to feed their habits.
St. Marys City Police say heroin appears to be making a comeback there after months of authorities focusing on a burgeoning local designer drug trade.
A Sept. 15 police raid at a Hemlock Road home in St. Marys saw roughly 500 bags of heroin seized and six charged in a drug ring police said saw large quantities of narcotics brought into the city from Pittsburgh.
Afterward, St. Marys police Sgt. Mike Shaffer said of heroin’s local presence: “We feel it is coming back.”
The Center for Rural Pennsylvania report, which compiled the findings of four statewide hearings held to examine the growing numbers of heroin and opioid related deaths and arrests across Pennsylvania, found that over the past five years, heroin and opioid abuse has claimed the lives of nearly 3,000 Pennsylvanians.
In addition, overdose deaths have increased by an astounding 470 percent, rising from 2.7 to 15.4 per thousand over the last two decades.
Drugs accounted for 15.72 deaths per 100,000 people in urban Pennsylvania compared with 13 per 100,000 deaths in the rural portions of the state in 2011.
Almost two times as many Pennsylvanians, ages 20 to 44, died from drug overdoses as did in car crashes from 1990 to 2011.
In response to the staggering statistics, the report’s authors and contributors advocate outreach and education individuals to the dangers of opioid abuse, as well as increasing the accessibility and availability for those seeking treatment and providing law enforcement with the tools to help eradicate heroin from the state’s communities.
On the legislative front, the report backs Senate Bill 1164, which would provide immunity to an individual who contacted authorities in the event of a drug overdose, as well as efforts expand the accessibility of the opiate overdose antidote, naloxone also known by the trade name Narcan.
Under the amendment, naloxone would be available to first responders such as law enforcement or fire department personnel. Health care professionals would also be able to provide a prescription for naloxone to persons at-risk of an overdose, family members, or an individual who may be in the position to assist a person who is suffering an overdose.
“This epidemic affects individuals of every age, gender, race, and background,” said state Sen. Gene Yaw, Center for Rural Pennsylvania board chairman. “The increased use of heroin, which often has roots in the abuse of prescription painkillers like Vicodin and OxyContin, has catapulted Pennsylvania to seventh in the nation for drug-related overdose deaths in the latest federal statistics.”
Yaw describes the issue as a public health crisis facing rural Pennsylvania, adding, “We know addiction has no municipal, county, or state boundaries. It is, across the board, a statewide and national epidemic. Simply locking people behind bars is not the answer. We, as a state, need to do more.”
