As spending on opioid epidemic soars, Maryland officials say death rate is ‘starting to plateau’ | Crime & justice

Though the annual death toll remains record-breaking – and more than four times higher than just nine years ago – the rate of increase is the slowest single-year jump since 2011, according to a first-of-its-kind state report released Thursday. Opioid-related deaths increased by 8.2% in 2017 and by 70.4% in 2016, the report said.

“We are encouraged that the epidemic is starting to plateau,” said Steven R. Schuh, executive director of Maryland’s Opioid Operational Command Center, a state organization that tracks government’s response to the crisis and issued the report.

Statewide, Maryland is expected to spend $672 million on opioid-related initiatives this fiscal year, the report said – $242 million more than it will spend building schools. Next fiscal year, opioid-related spending will rise to $747 million.

The latest data paint a grim picture of an epidemic that has killed 10,936 people in Maryland since 2009.

While deaths from heroin and prescription pain killers continued to decline last year, more people were killed by fentanyl – a synthetic opioid 50 times more powerful than heroin – and fentanyl mixed with cocaine.

Heroin deaths dropped by 23.7%, likely because addicts are replacing heroin with fentanyl, the report said. And deaths from prescription drugs dropped by 10%, though they were still at historic highs. Cocaine overdose deaths rose in 2018, with the vast majority – 88.7% – from cocaine mixed with fentanyl.

As recently as July, Maryland public health officials had labeled the surge in fentanyl deaths “staggering.” But annual fentanyl deaths did not increase as quickly in 2018 as they did previously – rising 17.1% last year, compared to a 42.5% spike the year before.

“We remain alarmed by the high toxicity, portability, difficulty of detection, low price, and wide availability of synthetic opioids,” the report said.

The official death toll will be released by public health officials in July.

More than a third of deaths in 2018 were in Baltimore City, with nearly another third in neighboring Baltimore and Anne Arundel counties.

The report tracked various state and local efforts to respond to the crisis, from the number of kilos of drugs seized to the number of people trained to administer naloxone, which can reverse an overdose before it becomes fatal. Maryland saw a 14% decline in opioid prescriptions last year and increased residential treatment beds by 44%, up to 2,333.

Montgomery and Prince George’s counties have the lowest rates of opioid-related deaths in the state, the report said, with 6.9 deaths per every 100,000 residents. The death rate in Baltimore is more than seven times higher.