Fatal overdoses break Ohio record

More Ohioans died of drug overdoses in 2013 than any year on record with 2,110 fatalities — more than double the number killed in vehicle crashes, according to Ohio Department of Health data released Thursday.

That amounted to one fatal overdose every four hours in Ohio. More people died from drug overdoses in Ohio than breast cancer, Parkinson’s disease or prostate cancer that year, according to U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention numbers.

“Those are human beings behind those numbers, and those people have families,” said Andrea Boxill, deputy director of the Governor’s Cabinet Opiate Action Team.

And the number of people affected is rising. Fatal overdoses were up 10 percent between 2012 and 2013 and have doubled since 2005, making them one of the fastest growing causes of death in the state.

In Licking County, 23 people died of drug overdoses in 2013, compared with 13 people in 2012. More people died of drug overdoses than from car crashes in 2013, according to the Ohio State Highway Patrol.

Lung cancer was the leading cause of death that year, accounting for 107 of the 1,466 deaths in the county, according to CDC data.

Officials report the increase has been fueled by opiates, such as prescription painkillers and heroin. They contributed to nearly three-fourths of all fatal overdoses in 2013, the data show.

Heroin overdoses increased by 41 percent between 2012 and 2013 to 983 deaths — nearly half of all overdoses in Ohio. Prescription pills contributed to 726 deaths in 2013, an increase from the previous year.

Those jumps came at a time when Ohio was cracking down on drugs. In 2011, Gov. John Kasich signed a law to restrict pill mills that were plaguing southern Ohio. In 2012, lawmakers added $3 million for opiate addiction treatment and a pilot program that distributed the overdose-reversing drug naloxone.

However, no one should expect the effects of those programs to be immediate, Boxill said.

“When you enact these kinds of programs, you often don’t see the fruits of that labor until three, four or five years down the road,” she said.

Other programs and policies were implemented after 2013. The expansion of Medicaid to single adults up to 138 percent of the federal poverty level provided health care access to people struggling with addiction, Boxill said.

Use of naloxone also has expanded, with Ohio emergency medical personnel using the anti-overdose drug 12,256 times in 2013 and 15,493 times in 2014.

Kasich also launched the Start Talking! campaign to encourage adults to speak with teenagers and young adults about the dangers of drugs.

All those efforts should improve numbers in 2014 and 2015, but Boxill said she doesn’t expect them to decrease tremendously.

“I’m realistic about the progression of this disease,” she said.

The release of data on overdose deaths is delayed because coroners have six months to complete drug overdose investigations before sending them to the state health department. From there, the data are sent to the CDC for coding and analysis. That means a true picture of overdoses happening now won’t be available until 2017.

jbalmert@gannett.com

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Twitter: @jbalmert

Fatal overdoses in Ohio

Source: Ohio Department of Health