Heroin deaths in Utah for the first time in 7 years

SALT LAKE CITY – For the first time in seven years, the number of deaths from heroin overdose has decreased in Utah in 2017, state leaders said Monday.

According to state calculations, there would have been 159 fatal overdoses related to heroin in 2017, a decrease of 14.5% over the previous year, said the lieutenant-general. Governor of Utah, Spencer Cox.

The fatal overdoses resulting from prescription opioids decreased for the third consecutive year in 2017, falling 16% to 237, Cox said.

The total number of opioid-related deaths dropped 19.8% in 2017 in Utah, according to data released Monday by the Cox office. He said that Utah is one of nine states where the total number of such deaths dropped in 2017.

The numbers indicate "we hope to have turned the corner here," said Cox. He added, "We still have a lot of work to do."

He believes that state policies on opioid addiction across Utah have made this state a model that others in the country can use to deal with substance abuse crises in their own communities.

"People are looking towards Utah, they are desperate to find out what works and where it works," said Cox. "We still have a long way to go, but at least we hope that now we have hope."

Prescription opioid overdose deaths in Utah have more than quintupled, from 60 in 2000 to 326 in 2007, according to data from the Utah Department of Health. The number of these deaths varied between 236 and 301 in the years that followed.

State figures show that fatal heroin overdoses remained below 100 per year from 2000 to 2011, but have been at a three-digit level annually since then. The number of these deaths rose to 140 in 2015 and to 186 in 2016.

According to Utah Department of Health spokesman Tom Hudachko, the 2017 figures reported on Monday reflect only overdose deaths from unintentional or undetermined opioids, not suicides involving opioids This could lead to differences from the statistical reports of other groups.

Some fatal cases involve both heroin and prescription opioids in a person's system and are accounted for in both categories, Hudachko explained.

In conjunction with Cox on Monday, officials from Utah's Health, Commerce, Public Safety and Social Services departments described the steps their agencies are taking to prevent, track and treat opioid addiction.

Anne Williamson, executive director of the Department of Human Services, said that there was no reason for Utahns to become desperate or fatalistic about the impact of opioid addiction in their lives. communities. Such dependence is both preventable and treatable, she said.

"The more we understand that addiction is a chronic brain disease, and a condition that can be treated in the same way that we treat our physical health is beneficial," she said. "Prevention works, treatment is effective and people are recovering."

Williamson said his service has made improvements over the last year by helping 438 uninsured drug-addicted patients enroll in a health coverage plan. The number of clients receiving treatment for opioid-related disorders as part of state-sponsored drug treatment programs also increased by 31% between 2017 and 2018, she said.

Francine Giani, executive director of the Utah Department of Commerce, said her agency had hired a specialist to provide training to doctors deemed "prescribing outside the established guidelines in the matter." The department also hired an additional investigator to investigate cases in which medical practices "harm patients and their families by imprudent or negligent prescribing," said Giani.

The ultimate goal, Giani said, is "reducing the amount of opioids, especially high-dose opioids, unnecessarily prescribed and delivered in the state of Utah."

According to Cox, each of the state departments responsible for fighting opioid addiction in Utah has recognized the importance of "the importance of real-time data to be able to see and understand what's happening on the ground" .

For example, by quickly identifying certain areas of the state where opioid overdose deaths "cluster", he said, "we will be able to see the doctors who prescribe imprudently fairly quickly".

Cox believes that intangible improvements, such as changing the way the Utahns talk about addiction, are also of paramount importance to the state's hopes of reducing the number of deaths from long-term deaths. opioids.

"It is more important than ever that as a society … we begin to recognize addiction and mental illness as such – diseases," he said. "When something inside us is broken, we feel we can not share it, and we have to change that."

Dr. Joseph Miner, executive director of Utah's Department of Health, said he agreed with Cox's feeling that there was no reason for it to happen. ################################################################# 39 be satisfied, despite the good news regarding the reduction of lethal overdoses of heroin.

"We still have an average (about) death from opioid overdose a day," said Miner.