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Your Voice Ohio is a collaborative effort to produce more relevant, powerful journalism based on the needs and ambitions of Ohioans and Ohio communities. Your Voice Ohio is an initiative of WYSO and more than 30 news organizations across Ohio.

Officials Warn Of "Bad Batch" Fueling Summer Spike In Montgomery County Drug Overdose Deaths

www.heroinaddiction.com

Montgomery County health officials say the number of drug overdoses is rising.

Montgomery is among seven counties across Ohio that are seeing a spike in recent drug-related emergency room visits and overdoses this summer.

The county reports that between July 26 and July 30, there has been an increase in the number of drug overdose encounters in Butler, Hamilton, Lake, Lorain, Lucas, Montgomery and Stark counties, with a total of 63 drug-related emergency room visits, 39 accidental overdoses and 24 other drug-related visits.
 

 
Helen Jones-Kelley heads Montgomery County’s department of Alcohol, Drug Addiction and Mental Health Services.

She says many of the overdose deaths are linked to a particularly "bad batch" of heroin laced with dangerous levels of fentanyl.

“There’s something going on with what’s on the street right now," she says. "It’s more potent than what we’ve had in the past year and it’s been about a week and a half of just constant overdoses, not all of them resulting in death but overdoses that brings people to the brink of death and creates a real public safety concern for us.”

Jones-Kelley says fentanyl is known to be 100 times more potent than morphine and 50 times more potent than heroin.

The Montgomery County Coroner’s Office has also reported an increase in the presence of methamphetamine in overdose victims during autopsies.

At least 19 people died in July of an accidental overdose in Montgomery County. Another three have so far died in August.

Dayton-Montgomery County numbers show the overdose rate through July is less than half of what is was at this time last year.

See the 2017 and 2018 numbers here.

But health officials urge anyone affected by addiction to seek assistance.

Montgomery County has launched a new smartphone app that comes with treatment information and resources. The free app is called “Get Help Now Montgomery County.” Click here for more information.

Jess Mador comes to WYSO from Knoxville NPR-station WUOT, where she created an interactive multimedia health storytelling project called TruckBeat, one of 15 projects around the country participating in AIR's Localore: #Finding America initiative. Before TruckBeat, Jess was an independent public radio journalist based in Minneapolis. She’s also worked as a staff reporter and producer at Minnesota Public Radio in the Twin Cities, and produced audio, video and web stories for a variety of other news outlets, including NPR News, APM, and PBS television stations. She has a Master's degree from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in New York. She loves making documentaries and telling stories at the intersection of journalism, digital and social media.