BOSTON (AP) — Non-fatal opioid overdoses in Massachusetts had soared by 200 percent from 2011 to 2015, with the total number of non-fatal overdoses during that period topping 65,000.
That’s one finding of a report released Wednesday by Republican Gov. Charlie Baker’s administration assessing the scope of the state’s opioid crisis.
The report found more than four percent of Massachusetts residents age 11 and older were estimated to have opioid use disorder in 2015 — compared to 8 percent diagnosed with diabetes.
The report, “An Assessment of Fatal and Nonfatal Opioid Overdoses in Massachusetts (2011 – 2015),” also concluded those with a higher overdose risk include the homeless, those recently released from incarceration and those with a serious mental illness or depression.
Another conclusion: “Compared to the general population, those who received three months of prescribed opioids in 2011 were 4 times as likely to die from an opioid-related overdose within one year, and 30 times as likely to die of an opioid-related overdose within five years.”
The report’s executive summary states that, since July 2016, “nearly 2,000 Massachusetts residents have died of opioid-related overdoses.”
“The total number of deaths has increased five-fold in the last 20 years, but the rate of increase of opioid-related overdose deaths was particularly sharp between 2013 and 2014.The last time Massachusetts saw such a sharp increase in deaths in a single category was during the AIDS epidemic of the 1980s and 1990s.”