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EDITORIAL: A frustrating fight to curb overdose deaths in Oklahoma

Daily Oklahoman - 10/10/2018

Oct. 10--email

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THE effort to curb the scourge of drug addiction in Oklahoma is like playing a game of Wac-a-Mole, or plugging one hole in a dike only to have another leak occur. Pick your analogy -- the bottom line is it's frustrating.

State mental health officials are experiencing this frustration as they work to combat fatal prescription drug overdoses, which have grown in frequency during the past several years. A few years ago, annual overdose deaths by opioids in Oklahoma surpassed the number of motorists killed on state roads, a jarring statistic.

The increase in opioid overdoses led to heightened awareness that helped produce policy changes, and those have made a difference. Preliminary data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show 769 overdose deaths in 2017, which would be a decrease of 34 from the prior year.

Overdoses caused by opioids other than heroin totaled 357 in 2017, which is an improvement over the 421 who died in this manner in 2016 and the 436 in 2015.

Terri White, commissioner of the state mental health department, says the reduction in deaths from legal drugs is due, in part, to a law approved in 2015 that requires doctors to use the state's online prescription monitoring database. The database lets physicians know if patients are taking multiple opioids or if a drug could cause a dangerous interaction.

White also notes that more people are getting medication-assisted treatment -- access to methadone or buprenorphine, for example -- and more first responders are carrying naloxone, which can reverse opioid overdose effects. The drug also is available in many pharmacies. The Legislature this year passed a "Good Samaritan" law that grants limited immunity from prosecution to those who call to report an overdose. That will help save lives.

Yet while the trend line is heading, if slightly, in the right direction regarding prescription drugs, it's going the wrong way with heroin, cocaine and methamphetamine. As The Oklahoman'sMeg Wingerter reported recently, the number of overdose deaths from those drugs has increased from 2015 to 2017 -- to 278 from 199 with meth, to 60 from 32 with heroin and to 44 from 30 with cocaine.

Oklahoma has been wrestling with meth for more than a decade. In 2004, a new state law limited the purchases of over-the-counter cold and allergy medicines that contained pseudoephedrine, a key ingredient in cooking meth. The number of meth labs in Oklahoma plummeted, but the drug remained plentiful as Mexican cartels filled the void. That continues today.

And, the counter-measures that work against opioids are not effective with meth, which is more addictive than many other drugs because of how it reacts to the human brain. A scientist with the Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation who is among those working on potential new treatments for meth says a breakthrough is years away. "It's really frustrating that overdoses are going up again," he said.

Such is the nature of this beast -- one step forward here, another step backward there. As challenging as that is, the fight needs to continue, with ongoing research on potential treatments and constant preaching -- to adults and children alike -- about the very real dangers these drugs present.

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