Heroin overdose deaths more than tripling over the past decade in Utah as patients cut off from prescription painkillers turn to cheaper alternatives, a new report shows.
The study, recently released by the Kaiser Family Foundation, reveals roughly 600 residents of Utah died from opioid related overdoses in 2016. Annual opioid deaths in the state have held relatively steady since 2013, however, officials are seeing a sharp increase in heroin deaths, which rose from 127 in 2015 to 166 in 2017, and have more than tripled since 2007, reported U.S. News and World Report.
The rise in heroin abuse is predictable as patients dependent on opioids who no longer have access to prescription painkillers turn to cheaper street drugs, officials say.
“When they get to a point where they can’t get prescription opioids, where they can’t afford them, then they’re turning to heroin because it’s cheaper to get,” said Jennifer Plumb, medical director of the Utah Naloxone Association, according to U.S. News and World Report.
Officials with the Utah Department of Health estimate that 80 percent of current heroin users nationwide began with a prescription for opioid painkillers. Plumb warns that if doctors “just cut them off” without a plan to manage a patient’s dependence, “they, unfortunately, are forced in that direction.”
Drug overdose deaths surged in 2016 by 21 percent, claiming more than 64,000 lives nationwide, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The increase is driven primarily by opioids, which claimed 42,249 lives in 2016, a 28 percent increase over the roughly 33,000 lives lost to opioids in 2015.
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Deaths from synthetic opioids like fentanyl, a synthetic painkiller roughly 50 to 100 times more powerful than morphine, experienced a particularly dramatic increase, more than doubling from 9,580 lives in 2015 to 19,413 lives in 2016.
The epidemic is contributing to declining life expectancy in the U.S., officials say. Life expectancy dropped for the second consecutive year in 2016 for the first time since an outbreak of influenza in 1962 and 1963.
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