LYNN — The number of heroin overdoses has soared to their highest level ever as a more potent mixture of the drug is making its way to the streets.
“We don’t think there are more users, but what they’re using is so much more powerful that it’s increasing overdoses and deaths,” said Dr. Kiame Mahaniah, chief medical officer at the Lynn Community Health Center.
The Lynn Police Department reported 283 heroin overdoses from January through July, up 12 percent for the same period a year ago. That’s the most ever in the seven-month period since records started being kept a decade ago. So far this year, there have been 38 deaths and experts say the city will likely exceed last year’s number of 50 fatalities.
The culprit, doctors say, is fentanyl. When a few grains of the powerful painkiller is mixed with heroin, often without users’ knowledge, it can cause an overdose, sometimes fatal.
Traces of fentanyl, 200 times more powerful than heroin, has been found in patient drug screenings in the last six months, Mahaniah said.
“We’re seeing fentanyl in people who say they’ve done heroin, but it’s also showing up in people who say they are just smoking marijuana,” he said. “Clearly, drug dealers are using the same equipment to weigh and sell pot that they use for heroin.”
Fentanyl is so dangerous, he said, police use extra caution during raids where they expect to find it. The man-made drug is used as part of anesthesia to help prevent pain after surgery.
Dr. Bennett Shamsai, the emergency room director at North Shore Medical Center, said it’s easy to see how heroin users would be unaware.
“When you buy pills at a pharmacy, you get the same one every time and you know how it interacts,” he said. “But when opioids are bought off the street, you’re getting whatever mix the drug dealers put together and you don’t know which batch you’re getting.”
Users think they are using the same dose, he said, when in fact they are ingesting something that’s much stronger and causes the overdose.
“The thing with these drugs is you get so sedated that you stop breathing and that’s what kills people,” Shamsai said.
While Essex county is the third most populous county in Massachusetts after Middlesex and Worcester, the district has had the second largest overdose deaths from 2000 through 2016 at 1,768, according to the Massachusetts Department of Health.
The opioid crisis is not limited to the Bay State.
Last week, President Donald Trump declared the abuse of narcotics a national emergency. While on vacation in New Jersey, the president said the drug crisis afflicting the nation is a “serious problem the likes of which we have never had.”
Gov. Charlie Baker was tapped by Trump to sit on a commission aimed at fighting drug addiction and the opioid crisis.
Last year, Baker signed bipartisan legislation to address the deadly epidemic plaguing the Commonwealth. The law limits first-time prescriptions for opioid drugs, such as painkillers after surgery, to a one week supply, with exceptions for treating cancer or chronic pain. It requires schools to screen students for risk of drug addiction. It also mandates a mental health professional provide a substance abuse evaluation within 24 hours to anyone who enters the emergency room suffering from an opioid overdose.
Material from Associated Press was used in this report.
