Heroin deaths drop in Maryland as fentanyl continues deadly rise

WASHINGTON — New opioid numbers released Wednesday by the Anne Arundel County Department of Health suggest fentanyl will continue to be Maryland’s largest contributor to opioid deaths, even as the number of fatal overdoses dropped significantly in the county year-to-date.

According to the agency’s report, dated Feb. 26, the county has already had 119 overdoses and 20 fatal overdoses in 2019. Those numbers are down 32 percent and 35.5 percent, respectively, compared to the same date in 2018.

That’s good news for a county that had more than 1,000 overdoses, 166 of which were fatal, in 2018.

At least half of Anne Arundel’s first 20 overdose deaths of the year have already been attributed to fentanyl, according to numbers from the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, with nearly the remaining half pending toxicology results.

Fentanyl-related deaths in Anne Arundel and across Maryland have skyrocketed since 2013, when just 58 fatal overdoses were linked to the powerful opioid statewide. The following year, 186 deaths were attributed to fentanyl. While the final tally for 2018 hasn’t been released yet, Maryland state health officials say they expect fentanyl-related deaths for last year to top 2,000.

Heroin, fentanyl and increasingly cocaine are the leading causes of overdose deaths in the state of Maryland. (Source: Maryland State Department of Health)

Jordan Fischer

Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid that’s roughly 50-times more potent than heroin. It can be lethal in doses as small as 0.25 milligrams – about a quarter of the weight of a single ant. When fentanyl first came on the scene it was often found mixed into heroin, but the drug is increasingly being sold – unwittingly or otherwise – on its own. As a result, it has supplanted heroin as the most dangerous drug in Maryland, so much so that heroin-related deaths have now dropped in the state for two-years straight even as fentanyl deaths have spiked. And the increasing prevalence of fentanyl-spiked cocaine has meant that 2017 was the first time in a decade that cocaine-related overdose deaths topped those caused by alcohol.

In response to the growing pervasiveness of powerful narcotics, the Anne Arundel County Department of Health says it has distributed nearly 4,000 naloxone kits in the past two years alone. The county estimates naloxone, also known by the brand name Narcan, has been administered in 80 percent of overdoses since 2017.

While fentanyl is available legally in the U.S. for prescribed medical uses as a Schedule II narcotic, the drug is typically sourced for illegal use through packages mailed from China. The United States Postal Service says between 2016 and 2017 alone there was a 375-percent increase in international parcel seizures related to opioids like fentanyl and its more powerful cousin, carfentanil.

VERIFY: Is illegal fentanyl ‘pouring’ in from China through our mail system?

In December, China agreed to label fentanyl a controlled substance, and earlier this month Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) introduced the Fentanyl Sanctions Act to identify and sanction foreign opioid traffickers.