Heroin and Oxycontin fatal overdoses decrease in state

LYNN -Fatal overdoses attributed to heroin and Oxycontin increased statewide over the past year, but health officials say surprisingly good news lay hidden in the bad numbers.
The state Department of Public Health reported that 645 people died of opiate overdoses in 2007. While the number certainly substantiates a significant drug problem, it also reflects a relatively small rise of 3 percent from the previous year. After all, the annual increases in fatal opiate overdoses in 2006 and 2005 were 19 percent and 13 percent, respectively.
Health officials attributed the slowdown in rate of overdoes to state spending in the millions of dollars on the expansion of drug treatment and prevention program. Further, the same officials said they are encouraged by the wider use of Narcan, a lifesaving overdoes prevention drug.
Narcan is credited with reversing more than 170 overdoses since the state began distributing the nasal spray in January to drug treatment staff and the family and friends of people at risk of overdosing.
The decrease in opiate overdoses at the state level was paralleled in Lynn. According to the Police Department annual report for 2007, there were 60 heroin overdoses in the city with four deaths.
In 2003, there were 107 heroin overdoses in Lynn, 15 of which proved fatal. In 2004, police reported 102 heroin overdoses with four deaths. Although the number of heroin overdoses decreased noticeably to 87 in 2005, the year also marked 11 opiate-related deaths.
In 2006, there were 63, with five deaths. Last year, there were 60, or just over half the number reported three years earlier. There were four deaths in 2007.
Lynn police seized 35,980 grams of heroin last year.
In Swampscott, police last summer wereinvestigating whether a lethal batch of heroin was responsible for the overdose death of a 24-year-old local man, Casey C. Washburn, whose body was found in a wooded area of New Bedford on July 24. His death marked the third suspected fatal overdose in New Bedford within a one-week period.
According to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), cocaine and heroin continue to rank as the primary drugs of abuse in Massachusetts in 2008 as Colombian and Dominican traffickers dominate the distribution throughout the state. OxyContin remains extremely popular and has been seen as a “gateway drug” to heroin use.