Drug overdose deaths up more than 30% in Ohio

The number of unintentional drug overdose deaths jumped 32.8 percent last year to 4,050, according to a state report released this week  (Source: “Over 4,000 Ohioans died of drug overdoses in 2016, a 33 percent increase,” Cleveland Plain Dealer, Aug. 30, 2017).

State officials are attributing the surge to stronger drugs, including fentanyl and the emergence of a similar drug, carfentanil. Carfentanil was involved in 340 overdose deaths, most of them in the second half of the year, according to the Ohio Department of Health's annual drug overdose death report.

Ohio has spent millions of dollars in drug prevention education, increasing access to treatment programs, arrests of traffickers and providing communities kits with medication that reverses drug overdoses. Yet overdose deaths continue to rise.

Ohio's opioid epidemic began in the mid-1990s, said Dr. Mark Hurst, medical director of the Ohio Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services. Officials continue to work to try to stay ahead of the state's addiction problem, Hurst said, adding that a silver lining in Wednesday's report was that 2016 had the fewest unintentional prescription opioid overdose deaths since 2009.