HADLEY — Fentanyl is becoming a leading cause of opioid overdoses in the state, officials said Tuesday.
The synthetic opioid and the problems it is causing locally was the topic for the Hampshire HOPE coalition which met at the Hadley Farms Meeting House.
“It amazes me the way that drugs are affecting our community,” said Dr. Mindy Hull, a pathologist for the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner in Boston. “I feel like an entire generation is being wiped out.
“I see it day in and day out. It’s not very unusual at all for me to come in to work on the weekend and have 30 to 40 cases on the roster and half of them being overdoses.”
More than 80 people attended the meeting, which featured a panel of treatment providers, Hull and Northwestern District Attorney David E. Sullivan.
Citing her own autopsy data, Hull said of the 3,759 cases she has seen from 2009 to now, 1,589 have been accidental deaths.
Of that number 853 were acute intoxications, or overdoses, Hull added. And in the last three years, overdoses from fentanyl have increased from 49 in 2014 to 74 so far in 2016, she said.
“Locally, we need more data. That’s why we’re here today,” said Cherry Sullivan, the coalition’s coordinator. “We need to have a better understanding in our community.”
Already this year there have been 24 opioid-related deaths reported in Hampshire County, according to Cherry Sullivan. The town of Ware has been hit the hardest, with six deaths. It’s unclear how many of those deaths are fentanyl related, she said.
The coalition works to address the rise in prescription opioid misuse, heroin use, addiction and overdose deaths in the county through policy, practice and system change.
“We are saving lives in the community. We are doing a lot but there are still challenges fentanyl poses for saving lives,” Cherry Sullivan said.
One challenge is that the drug, synthesized in the 1960s, is much more potent than morphine or heroin. Fentanyl also has 15 different analogues, or sister drugs, that vary in strength.
When used medically, it is typically prescribed to treat pain, or to manage pain after surgery, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse.
“It takes a very low dose in order to cause death, unlike heroin, which takes a much higher dose to result in death, typically speaking,” Hull said.
Dr. Andy Mendenhall is the regional medical director for addiction treatment and rehabilitation center CleanSlate. He said addiction has to be treated in partnership with medically supportive treatment as well as other programs.
Mendenhall said talking to patients about getting into recovery is a big task.
“Oftentimes, what we want for them, they are not yet ready for,” he said.
Liz Whynott, the needle exchange program director for Tapestry Health Systems in Northampton, said she works directly with people who are not yet ready for that step.
The program works with harm reduction and speaks to drug users about steps they can take to protect themselves.
In addition to community outreach, Whynott suggested trying approaches that are already used in other areas of the country, such as safer injection facilities, which are supervised by medical professionals to prevent overdose deaths.
She also recommended the decriminalization of heroin, not to enable people, but to remove the “shame” of using an illegal drug and encourage people to seek treatment.
A few in attendance echoed Whynott’s suggestions of decriminalizing heroin as well as the drug’s paraphernalia.
Following the panel’s presentation, attendees convened in small groups to come up with ideas on next steps for the coalition. Some also took the opportunity to learn more about the process that Hull, in her role as medical examiner, uses to conduct and communicate the results of autopsies.
Emily Cutts can be reached at ecutts@gazettenet.com.