Dr. Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, called the latest numbers “truly staggering.”
Last year in Montgomery County there were 337 accidental overdose deaths, an increase from 323 the year before, according to Montgomery County Community Overdose Action Team data.
Some bright news locally is there has been fewer accidental overdose deaths in Montgomery County in 2022 compared to this time in 2021. Preliminary data shows 95 people in Montgomery County died in accidental overdoses between January and April of this year while 120 people died of accidental overdoses last year in the same time frame.
More people are seeking treatment for addiction now than in the past couple of years when the pandemic limited treatment options, Richard Confer, the founder of Recovery Works Healing Center in West Carrollton, told the Dayton Daily News earlier this year.
“We’re busier with people seeking treatment which is good,” Confer said. “I don’t know if the use (of drugs) is any worse or better, but I do think we have seen an increase in people coming out and getting help more recently. If people are engaged in treatment, we usually don’t see overdose deaths take place.”
He said some of the people seeking treatment are doing so after being ordered to by a court, but he believes whatever it takes for people to get help is in their best interest. Officials have said that more drugs now are laced with fentanyl and other substances that the user might not know about, and therefore are even more dangerous.
Confer said people going through addiction usually need assistance to defeat it, and loved ones should support them.
“The reality of it is you can’t make anybody get help,” he said. “The best way to do it is to love someone and encourage them to get treatment. Don’t enable the behavior, but encourage them to get help.”
The White House issued a statement calling the accelerating pace of overdose deaths “unacceptable” and promoting its recently announced national drug control strategy. It calls for measures like connecting more people to treatment, disrupting drug trafficking and expanding access to the overdose-reversing medication naloxone.
U.S. overdose deaths have risen most years for more than two decades. The increase began in the 1990s with overdoses involving opioid painkillers, followed by waves of deaths led by other opioids like heroin and — most recently — illicit fentanyl.
Last year, overdoses involving fentanyl and other synthetic opioids surpassed 71,000, up 23% from the year before. There also was a 23% increase in deaths involving cocaine and a 34% increase in deaths involving meth and other stimulants.
Overdose deaths are often attributed to more than one drug. Some people take multiple drugs and inexpensive fentanyl has been increasingly cut into other drugs, often without the buyers’ knowledge, officials say.
“The net effect is that we have many more people, including those who use drugs occasionally and even adolescents, exposed to these potent substances that can cause someone to overdose even with a relatively small exposure,” Volkow said in a statement.
Experts say the COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated the problem as lockdowns and other restrictions isolated those with drug addictions and made treatment harder to get.
Overdose death trends are geographically uneven. Alaska saw a 75% increase in 2021 — the largest jump of any state. In Hawaii, overdose deaths fell by 2%.
Accidental Overdose Deaths in Montgomery County by year
2017 – 566
2018 – 291
2019 – 288
2020 – 323
2021 -337
Source: Montgomery County Community Overdose Action Team
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