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Opiate Epidemic Rages On In Middlesex County
By BARRY THOMPSON (Patch Staff) April 18, 2015-1 hour ago
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It's Actually Been Getting A Lot Worse.


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More than 65 people have died from opiate overdoses in Middlesex County this year according to a Tuesday missive from District Attorney Marian Ryan’s office.

This means the first three and a half months of 2015 have been worse for overdoses than the entire 12 months of 2012 were in the community.

This type of drug abuse is hardly a new problem. The Boston Globe reports that heroin overdoses ended 103 Middlesex County lives in 2014, more than tripling the downer-related death toll of the previous year. That statistic doesn’t include fatal prescription opiate overdoses.

This means if the rate of opiate deaths in Middlesex County continues at its current rate, it should easily surpass that of 2014 by the end of 2015.

“It cannot be emphasized strongly enough that we all must continue to partner together, because we have a very urgent public health and public safety issue on our hands,” said Ryan, speaking before the Mystic Valley Public Health Coalition and the Substance Abuse Collaborative, during a reported brainstorming session in Reading.

The consensus among the organizations, says Ryan’s statement, was initiatives for treatment, prevention, and education are just as essential for stemming the tide of overdoses as crime prevention.

“We recognize that you cannot simply arrest your way out of this dilemma,” said Melrose Chief of Police Michael Lyle, acknowledging that heroin and prescription pain killers have become endemic throughout his city.

Lyle noted that Narcan injections - designed to counteract the effects of an opiate overdose - are kept on hand in every Melrose Police squad car.

“Every time we successfully use Narcan, we are giving a victim of the drug epidemic another chance to turn their life around,” he said.

The Mystic Valley Public Health Coalition - which includes reps from Malden, Medford, Melrose, Stoneham, Wakefield, and Reading - was awarded $10,000 per year for three years from the Massachusetts Department of Public Heath in 2012. The money was intended to help bring down the quantity of overdoses, improve responses to overdoses, and cut down on abuse of prescription opiates in their respective communities.







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