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The heroin epidemic is skyrocketing throughout the country, Pennsylvania and in Lycoming County, but police and medical crews may not be prepared to deal with the rush, according to Project Bald Eagle Executive Director Steven Murphy Shope.
“This isn’t new in America; this is happening in other communities and other states,” Shope said. “Every time the local medical community gets together and puts greater controls on prescription drugs … heroin use on the street explodes.
“We have got to start recognizing that we are ill equipped for this,” Shope added. “Are our law enforcement prepared?”
Three men – ages 27, 28 and 49 – died of heroin overdoses over the past weekend in Bradford County, according to state police. Each of the individuals took a brand of heroin laced with fentanyl, “an anesthesia drug, that is often used to increase the potency of heroin that has been diluted,” police said.
The identities of the three men have not yet been released, and the state police and Bradford County Coroner’s Office are continuing their investigation.
“We were already seeing an epidemic just with heroin,” Shope said. “But now that they are mixing it with fentanyl and its far more powerful than heroin and it’s deadly, we are seeing those rates spike dramatically.”
In Lycoming County, 13 people died of overdoses in 2014, 25 people died in 2015 and, so far, in 2016 the county is “on track to hit 60 (deaths) by the end of the year,” Shope said.
Nine of the 25 deaths in 2015 were a result of heroin and one was due to a mixture of heroin and fentanyl, according to Lycoming County Coroner Charles E. Kiessling Jr.
Shope and Pennsylvania College of Technology Police Chief Chris Miller are proponents for the heroin anti-drug naloxone. It is used to counter the effects of opioids, and many police departments across the state, including the state police, issue it to their officers.
Currently, in addition to the state police, the Penn College Police Department is the only one in the county to carry naloxone, according to Kiessling.
“It’s up to each individual agency whether they want to carry it or not, whether or not they think it’s
part of their important role in the community,” Miller said.
“We felt it was in our best interest here, being located where we are and the amount of population of our campus and the transient population that passes through,” Miller added.
Other police departments in the city often do not respond to medical calls because the paramedics are very close in Williamsport and often arrive at the same time or before police officers, Miller said.
If paramedics arrive at a scene first, they should always be the ones to administer medical attention, Kiessling said. However, if police officers arrive first, they need to keep the individual alive until EMS arrives, he added.
According to Kiessling, this does not need to be done with naloxone. Officers may use a breathing apparatus to breathe for the person instead of using naloxone.
Kiessling fears that providing a “safety net” drug will not stop heroin users from returning to their old habits once they are saved. Treatment and enforcement should be the focus, he said.
“Drug dealers are murderers,” Kiessling said, encouraging greater action against the dealers and proper help for those who are using illegal drugs.
According to Miller, treatment also is a high priority in his department when administering naloxone. Officers in the department are trained not only with how to use it but also how to get individuals to treatment afterward.
“When and if you make the choice of whether to carry it, training and the knowledge of what goes on around it is absolutely critical,” said J. Elliott Strickland Jr., chief student affairs officer at Penn College.
Shope added that training family members and members of the public is key in fighting the heroin epidemic. Project Bald Eagle is offering training to over 65 individuals in the community on how to use naloxone.
Additionally, naloxone can be prescribed to every resident of the state of Pennsylvania per an order from Pennsylvania Physician General Dr. Rachel Levine.
“If we are going to help these people, the first thing we have to do is save their lives,” Shope said. “We have to get people into treatment and, in the interim, we have to keep them alive.”
Heroin addiction is the result of individuals on prescription medicine who can no longer get it prescribed for them or have the money to buy it, Shope said. Instead, they turn to heroin, a cheaper and easier drug to find and one that produces a similar result.
Unlike other drugs, Shope said, heroin addiction spans all demographics and ages. Anyone on prescription opioids is susceptible to an addiction that could lead to abuse of heroin.