Fentanyl has increased overdoses in Lorain County

ELYRIA — A prevalence of fentanyl has increased overdoses, according to statistics and the Mental Health, Addiction and Recovery Services Board of Lorain County. Synthetic fentanyl is in everything, MHARS Opioid Response Outreach Coordinator Jinx Mastney said. "The lethality of the drugs on the street, especially fentanyl is more deadly and more likely to cause overdose," she said. "And fentanyl is in everything — if they're buying drugs from the streets, it's a minefield out there." Lorain police responded to 74 overdoses from Jan. 1 to May 31, according to statistics from the department — a more than 50 percent increase from the same time frame last year. Lorain police responded to 49 overdoses for the first five months of 2021, 36 during the same time in 2020, 53 in 2019 and 58 in 2018. Lorain County Public Health recorded anomalies with up to 10 overdoses in a 24-hour timeframe three times in May. May 14 saw 10 individuals overdose, with nine on May 7 and eight on May 1, according to a previous news release from the MHARS Board. The anomalies in May included a mass overdose event involving four individuals May 13-15. Mastney said for the first four months of the year they've received reports of 34 overdose deaths from the county coroner — complete data from May was not yet available. While overdoses are up, they're not resulting in as many deaths, she said, as more people have access to naloxone, fentanyl test strips and other harm-reduction efforts. The county is still in the midst of the fallout from COVID-19, with isolation and stress alongside self-medication going hand-in-hand with increased opioid and alcohol use. "There's a saying in medication-assisted treatment and in the drug community in general that relapse lives in isolation," she said. "So a lot of people during that COVID time that had been in recovery faced some relapse situations." Easy access is also a contributing factor, she said. Social media allow online black markets to operate in anonymity and reach more users than dealing on the street. And the faux medications coming out of pill mills are now pristine — with little difference between a prescribed Xanax and one laced with fentanyl from a home lab. The synthetic fentanyl is cheap, with large amounts coming in from Mexico — while the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration has seized millions of counterfeit pills and other fentanyl-laced items, there's still enough getting through to flood the market, Mastney said. "We take two steps forward and three steps back, but we keep going, we keep persevering," she said. Still, Lorain County is ahead of the game, she said, with programs and supports for those struggling with mental health and addiction from myriad providers. Lorain County Public Health and other providers have put together 2,000 Project Dawn kits with naloxone and literature on harm reduction programs, alongside a "strike team" letting people in known drug-use areas know what's happening. While Lorain County may be ahead of the game compared to other counties in the state, it will take getting ahead of traffickers and working on prevention to get the continued opioid crisis under control, Mastney said. For those who use before age 25, opioids and others can permanently change their brain, but for some users, the damage done can heal. "I would really like to hammer home that this is a treatable, manageable disorder, just like high blood pressure, just like diabetes," she said. "I need the community to understand that." She added later, "There's the stigma still flying around a lot of it and we really need the community to get educated on the fact that this is a treatable disorder and that these people are suffering and we are losing a lot of very productive people — people who would be very essential to our community with just a little bit of help. It's heartbreaking for me." Contact Carissa Woytach at (440) 329-7245 or cwoytach@chroniclet.com.