FEATURE
Understanding the Opioid Overdose Crisis % of Methamphetamine and Cocaine Overdose Deaths without Opioid Involvement 9%
Count and percent of overdose deaths with opioids involved: 2018: 83% 2019: 87% 2021: 79% 2020: 84%
6%
6%
5%
6%
3%
3%
1% by David Kostival
2018
2019 Cocaine, no opioid
W
2020
2021
Methamphetamine, no opioid
Source: Berks County Coroner's Office
hen tracking national overdose deaths involving opioids, there has been a steady and sometimes rapid increase over the past 20 years. The National Institute on Drug Abuse reports that overdose deaths from any opioid overdoses were well under 10,000 in 2000. But by 2010, the number had risen to 21,088 and continued to rise to around 47,000 deaths in both 2018 and 2019. In 2017, The New York Times called the opioid crisis the deadliest drug crisis in American history, with it taking the lives of 90 Americans every day during that year. And then a significant rise occurred in 2020 when the number of deaths rose to 68,630 overdose deaths.
When speaking in the broadest terms, the opioid crisis includes prescription opioids; natural and semi-synthetic opioids and methadone; heroin and synthetic opioids (mostly fentanyl). The National Institute of Health explains the problem with prescription opioids is that they are powerful drugs which are often over-prescribed for the reduction of pain from a surgery or injury. The opioids can produce harmful side effects, including drowsiness, mental fog, nausea, constipation and respiratory depression (slowed breathing) that can lead to an overdose death. Continued use will lead to addiction, when average citizens – who never intended to use illegal drugs – are forced to turn to street drugs,
The Pennsylvania Department of Health has released information that there were 5,162 fatal overdoses in Pennsylvania in 2020, with 128 of those occurring in Berks County.
But the problem with street drugs is that there is no quality control, and they are often laced with additional substances such as Fentanyl. The Centers for Disease Control states Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid that is up to 50 times stronger than heroin and 100 times stronger than morphine and is a major contributor to both fatal and nonfatal overdoses in the United States. The danger is that people are not usually aware that their drugs are laced with fentanyl.
That statistic isn’t really all that surprising since the COVID-19 pandemic has been attributed to the highest annual number of fatal drug overdoses on record in the United States. The COVID-19 pandemic did not help matters any because emergency rooms at hospitals were not as accessible for those who overdosed. And the numbers did not fall when many restrictions associated with COVID-19 began to ease. Preliminary data shows there were 5,224 lives lost to overdoses in the state in 2021. 12
THE RESPONSE // SUMMER 2022
The drug crisis in Berks County received considerable attention last September when there was an extreme surge of 101 overdoses and three deaths from a bad batch of street drugs. At the time, Berks County District Attorney John Adams said the incident
