County not immune to national opioid crisis

County not immune to national opioid crisis

Fentanyl patch abuse a common cause of overdose

news@theeveningtimes.com

What has been the local impact of the prescription pain patch Fentanyl? The opioid is center stage in the latest drug abuse craze.

West Memphis City Council took it seriously enough to pass a resolution to fight the impact of opioids for the sake of public health and conserving public funds in law enforcement, emergency response and abuse education and addiction recovery. Mayor Bill Johnson worried openly as city council acted to pass a resolution pursuing manufacturers and suppliers flooding the state with the drug and said exposure to Fentanyl could become a workers compensation expense among first responders.

With the backdrop of 142 opioid deaths per day in the United States, President Donald Trump declared a national health crisis. All levels of government have followed the lead to combat the opioid plague. Fentanyl is a prescription narcotic used as a painkiller to ease severe pain especially for the terminally ill and has been identified as the chief culprit in the opioid epidemic.

Crittenden County Sheriff Chief Investigator Todd Grooms and West Memphis Police Captain Joe Baker weighed in on local experience with the illicit opioid epidemic sweeping the nation. Baker said there were a handful of Fentanyl deaths in the city earlier this year. Grooms said no deaths have occurred in county jurisdiction but Fentanyl abuse is on the rise.

Fentanyl has been used to cut heroin.

“They prescribe Fentanyl patches for terminally ill patients,” said Groom.

“People find out someone has them and they steal them. Fentanyl is strong.

They put the patch on and it is absorbed trough the skin, so its pretty powerful.”

The chief said the drug is too commonly used to cut heroin. The mix can be lethal because the heroin plus the Fentanyl is injected straight into the blood stream. “That makes it super potent and super deadly,” said Grooms. “It’s reached the point where we’ve seen reports of officers getting it on their clothing, they brush it off, and just that much fentanyl getting into their skin can overdose someone. So now officers are carrying Narcan.”

Narcan is a life saving drug for people that overdose and now it is part of first responders emergency toolbox. Equipping public safety personnel and emergency medical responders with Fentanyl is an expense absorbed by local government. Narcan has a shelf life and stock must be rotated with the expiration dates. The Sheriff’s office, and West Memphis police and fire departments have been trained on using Narcan.

“In all our recent drug classes we’ve been told officers have to be far more careful in the handling of drugs,” said Grooms. “You don’t know what anything is until its tested. You have to be careful just collecting evidence because if you get any on your skin it could lead to an overdose.”

Baker said Fentanyl in heroin has been on the rise and it has been proven deadly in West Memphis.

“All over the country this has been an upward trend in opioid cases,” said Baker. “Particularly with us, we saw an upward trend in fentanyl deaths over the middle part of the year.

Thankfully that has trended down in the last several months. We haven’t had a Fentanyl overdose in months.”

The illicit use of fentanyl has continued as a concern for police.

“Illicit purchases and possessions have been getting worse over the last five years,” said Baker.

The WMPD responded to the summertime string of overdose deaths this summer with department wide training.

“That’s when we equipped all our patrol units with Narcan kit for opioid overdose,” said Baker. “We’ve haven’t had to deploy one in the field yet, but we did get a block of training with the fire department and developed use protocol.

Every officer in the department has had training with it. We are prepared for the next time.”

With Fentanyl in the heroin blend, drug users often don’t realize what they are handling according to the captain.

“A lot of time people don’t know they are getting it,” said Baker. “If you get a bad batch of heroin come through and ‘bam!’— you’ve got all these overdoses hitting. It goes away and its back to typical heroin use and they don’t overdose as much as when Fentanyl is in play. We probably had a bad batch on the street this summer.”

There has been no exposure to officers while that danger is a new reality for officers and emergency medical workers.

“We’ve always been real strong on handling drugs while collecting evidence and we’ve really reinforced handling drugs in our recent training,” said Baker.

By John Rech