Spike in fatal overdoses under investigation | Winchester Star

Through Monday night, eight people have fatally overdosed and 19 have non-fatally overdosed this year in Winchester and Clarke, Frederick, Page, Shenandoah and Warren counties. At this time last year, there had been four deaths and 32 non-fatal overdoses. Twenty-two people died last year from overdoses in the Northern Shenandoah Valley, down from a high of 40 in 2017.

Price said toxicological results aren’t back on the latest deaths, but they are likely to have involved fentanyl. Most deaths last year involved fentanyl-laced heroin.

Fentanyl is a synthetic opiate that’s at least 50 times more potent than heroin. Much of it is manufactured in laboratories in China and smuggled into the U.S.

Price said most of the heroin used in the area is from Baltimore, where many local addicts and low-level dealers — many of them addicts themselves — buy it on the street.

The task force responds to all area overdoses and investigates deaths like murder investigations.

“We’re doing our best to work the cases back to try to identify these Baltimore dealers who may have never set foot in the commonwealth and don’t even know their victims and hold them accountable for the havoc they’re wreaking on the area,” he said. “You can drive up there and on certain street corners it’s just an open-air [drug] market.”

Next month, a drug intervention team, consisting of a Winchester police officer assigned to the task force, a social worker and a peer recovery specialist — a recovering addict certified by the state to mentor addicts — will start responding to overdose scenes. The goal is to steer overdose victims into treatment rather than charging them with heroin possession.