Duluth police raise alarm over wave of opioid incidents

Twice in the past week-and-a-half, McCarthy said on Friday, Jan. 25, she hurried to the ICU after hearing someone had overdosed. Both times, her would-be clients died before she ever had a chance to meet with them.

The two were among five people who have died of opioid overdoses in Duluth in the first 23 days of the year, a number Duluth police pointed to with alarm at a news conference on Friday.

It’s the highest number of overdose deaths Duluth has ever had in a single month, said Lt. Jeff Kazel, commander of the Lake Superior Drug and Violent Crimes Task Force.

Another 11 people who overdosed survived with treatment from police and first responders.

Additionally, one person has died of an opioid overdose on the Iron Range and one in Superior this month, Duluth Police Chief Mike Tusken said.

That came after a year in which it appeared that Duluth might have turned a corner with regard to opioid overdoses. After police responded to a record 150 overdoses in 2017, the number was down to 92 last year. In all of 2018, seven overdose deaths were recorded.

The news conference followed the court appearances Thursday of two men charged with aiding and abetting third-degree murder for their alleged roles in selling heroin to a Duluth man who then overdosed and died.

Jacob Jordan Johnson, 26, of Proctor and Jamie Philanders McNeary, 49, of Duluth were charged in connection with the Dec. 14 death of a man who was found unconscious in his bathroom. The man’s 13-year-old son had texted the man’s girlfriend to say he couldn’t get his dad to wake up.

Tusken said he wants a message to be heard:

“If you are a drug dealer, if you’re peddling poisons to people in our community, that not only are we coming after you to hold you accountable for the sale of these poisons, but also if … the narcotic that you sell to someone else causes their death, that we will also look to prosecute you for homicide,” Tusken said.

The increase in deaths is connected to an increased presence of fentanyl, Kazel said.

“It used to be just a cut of fentanyl in heroin,” he said. “Now you’re seeing just straight fentanyl. The fentanyl is the drug that they’re selling, and they’re selling it as heroin.”

Fentanyl is 100 times more potent than heroin, Tusken said.

But police also want to attack the problem from the treatment and education side, Tusken and Kazel said.

That’s why a two-year $279,000 grant was sought and awarded to finance the work for which McCarthy was hired, Kazel explained. The idea is to reduce the Northland’s ready market for dealers.

“People come here to sell opioids because they can make lots of money,” he said. “If we reduce that demand pool, fewer people are going to be coming here to make money.”

McCarthy comes to the position with firsthand knowledge of what it’s like to experience and escape from addiction. She became addicted to opioids at the age of 14, she said, and when she moved to Duluth from Tomahawk, Wis., at 19 was able to find heroin within a half-hour. With treatment and support programs, she beat her addiction before she turned 21. Wednesday was her 8-year “sobriety birthday,” she said.

She’s excited about her job, McCarthy said, because she has a love for people who are chemically dependent and a passion for helping them. But, “it’s been a very rough month,” she acknowledged.

Duluth police say they believe a continued no-compromise stance toward dealers along with an increased emphasis on treating and educating users can change that.

“Ultimately, we want to get our community well again,” Tusken said. “And so this is the first step.”