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It’s Not Just Heroin: Drug Cocktails Are Fueling The Overdose Crisis
Martha Bebinger
November 13, 2015
CHELSEA, Mass. A bald man in gray sweats bounds into the brick plaza next to City Hall.
“Hey,” someone calls out, “where you been?”
“At the hospital,” the man named Anthony says. “I OD’d.”
A half dozen people watching shake their heads. It’s a bad week in Chelsea, they say, with three overdose deaths.
“They’re dropping like flies,” says Theresa, a woman who manages a rooming house and does not want to share her last name.
Anthony, whose last name we’ve also agreed not to use, says he overdosed the night before on a particularly strong bag of heroin, laced with fentanyl, the dealer said, or something like it.
“[The dealer] told me how strong it was,” Anthony says, “but everyone says that to sell their dope.”
Fentanyl, an opiate that is many times more powerful than heroin, was present in about 37 percent of overdose deaths from January through June of last year, based on 502 cases analyzed by the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner in Massachusetts.
continued here http://commonhealth.wbur.org/2015/11/drug-overdose-cocktails
Martha Bebinger
November 13, 2015
CHELSEA, Mass. A bald man in gray sweats bounds into the brick plaza next to City Hall.
“Hey,” someone calls out, “where you been?”
“At the hospital,” the man named Anthony says. “I OD’d.”
A half dozen people watching shake their heads. It’s a bad week in Chelsea, they say, with three overdose deaths.
“They’re dropping like flies,” says Theresa, a woman who manages a rooming house and does not want to share her last name.
Anthony, whose last name we’ve also agreed not to use, says he overdosed the night before on a particularly strong bag of heroin, laced with fentanyl, the dealer said, or something like it.
“[The dealer] told me how strong it was,” Anthony says, “but everyone says that to sell their dope.”
Fentanyl, an opiate that is many times more powerful than heroin, was present in about 37 percent of overdose deaths from January through June of last year, based on 502 cases analyzed by the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner in Massachusetts.
What this chart from two Harvard researchers shows: “The most frequent drug category cited in overdose deaths was heroin (39.1%), followed by non-specified opioids (36.9%) and fentanyl (also 36.9%). Cocaine was cited in 23.4% of cases, ethanol (alcohol) 18.8%, and benzodiazepines 13.0%. “Chronic substance use,” a vague description which did not refer to a specific drug class but infers that drug use was implicated in the death, was cited in 2.4% of cases. … The vast majority of opioid-related overdose deaths in the first half of 2014 involved more than one drug.”
continued here http://commonhealth.wbur.org/2015/11/drug-overdose-cocktails
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