Fentanyl deaths up 85 percent in Spotsylvania County | News

“Isn’t that something? Wow!” said Pat Bischoff, clinic coordinator at the Rappahannock Area Community Services Board. “I’m a little surprised that Spotsylvania was the place that was higher. I would have thought for sure it would have been the city of Fredericksburg, but maybe the rural part of Spotsylvania has more connections, and it’s off the beaten path.”

Of course, Interstate 95 is the great connector, and being between two major metropolitan areas just fuels the drug supply, said 1st Sgt. Murdock Woodard of the Spotsylvania County Sheriff’s Office.

He heard reports of drug dealers from Philadelphia coming to the area, and the price difference explains why.

The average cost for a “point” of heroin, which is one-tenth of a gram, is $5 to $7 in Philly, but it sells for $25 to $30 in Fredericksburg.

One ounce of heroin contains about 280 points. A dealer could buy an ounce up north for $1,400 to $1,960, drive 200 miles south, then sell it for $7,000 to $8,400.

And, when dealers mix heroin, cocaine or any other white powdered drug with fentanyl, a synthetic opioid up to 100 times stronger than morphine, the high comes quicker—but so do the deaths.

“It’s probably one of the most volatile substances out there that we’ve ever dealt with, at least in my 18 years of being a cop,” Woodard said.

Bischoff sometimes asks users who come to treatment programs why they would even try fentanyl “when you know death could be automatic,” she said.

One man said it was because it gave a faster high. While she couldn’t understand his reasoning, “for him, he said it was worth the risk,” Bischoff said.

“When you’re in that moment of trying to get high,” she said, “you just don’t care” about anything else.

The report on state drug deaths was issued by the chief medical examiner’s office last week. Results for 2018 are preliminary, the report cautioned, because the state is still awaiting information on 30 drug deaths.

From a statewide perspective, the biggest takeaway is that fatal overdoses in Virginia decreased slightly (3.4 percent) from 2017 to 2018 for the first time in seven years, and state officials are heralding the change.

“Every bit of progress and good news, even if small, should be recognized,” said Attorney General Mark Herring.

He tempered his optimism with the acknowledgement that the 1,484 deaths, from all drug overdoses in 2018, are “still a staggering number that shows this epidemic is far from over.”

Carmen Greiner, director of Lighthouse Counseling of Fredericksburg, feels the same way.

“We’ve had an opioid problem for at least the last 10 years, but nobody really noticed until a couple years ago,” she said.

She’s part of the Be Well Rappahannock Council, a group that formed after a 2017 town hall highlighted local addiction. Council members try to educate the community on the dangers of first exposure to an opioid, which, as Woodard tells high-school students, often comes after they’ve injured themselves in sports or skateboarding.

They’re prescribed legal painkillers, which then can lead to the body’s need for more opioids. When pills can’t be obtained because new government standards have cracked down on opioid prescriptions, users turn to street drugs.

“By that point, folks with addiction problems are so desperate, they take everything,” Greiner said.

Last year, 110 people died from drug overdoses in the Fredericksburg region, a 7 percent increase from 2017, when 103 people died. The area includes the city and the counties of Caroline, Culpeper, King George, Orange, Spotsylvania, Stafford and Westmoreland.

More than half of the fatalities, or 72 deaths, were caused by fentanyl overdoses. And Spotsylvania wasn’t the only county to see an increase. The numbers also rose between 2017 and 2018 from eight to 14 deaths in Stafford and from three to seven deaths in Caroline.

Greiner believes users’ lack of knowledge about what they’re getting contributed to the overall increase in drug deaths last year, along with what she calls a general prejudice against addicts and drug-treatment plans, as well as a shortage of substance-abuse treatment.

Since 2007, people in the Fredericksburg region have lost 751 family members and loved ones to drugs.

In the medical world, fentanyl is one of the strongest opiate drugs on the market. It’s often used after surgery when a longer-lasting opiate doesn’t cover the temporary pain that breaks through the opiate barrier, according to the Narconon International website.

The fentanyl that’s being mixed with heroin and cocaine or showing up in tablet forms and resembling oxycodone didn’t come from any pharmacy. It’s produced illegally, often in Mexico or China, and is so potent that a couple of granules can mean the difference between the ultimate high and death.

Greiner compared it to surgery and why an anesthesiologist is paid well to do a difficult job.

“Opiates act like anesthesia, and you go very easily from unconscious to dead if you don’t know what you’re taking,” she said.

Woodard said local first responders and law-enforcement officers are trained on the hazards of fentanyl, just as they’re warned to check out a storm scene for downed power lines or to be on the lookout for guns on domestic-abuse calls.

At least six officers in Spotsylvania and Fredericksburg have had to be “Narcanned,” or given the drug naloxone to reverse the effects after coming in contact with fentanyl during an arrest. Some were overcome just be being in the same room; another touched a camera used at the scene, and there was enough airborne powder on it to cause a reaction.

Spotsylvania officers also have used the Narcan treatment on some drug users at least six times, said Capt. Liz Scott. During a January interview, she and fellow officers Gordon Ridings and Butch Allison talked about fentanyl overdoses and the reaction they cause in the drug community.

“If somebody hears that dope made somebody overdose, that to them means it’s really good, so [they say] let’s try it, and if worse comes to worse, they’ll just [use] Narcan,” said Ridings.

The officers described another scenario that’s even more bizarre.

“They’ll have Narcan parties,” Ridings said, “and the first to get Narcanned wins.”