At least 100,000 Americans died of drug overdoses between April 2020 and April 2021, according to the CDC. That鈥檚 a record-high number.
Percy Menzies, president and founder of St. Louis-based Assisted Recovery Centers of America, said the pandemic had a lot to do with the increase in overdoses.
鈥淲hat the pandemic did was increase the access to drugs, and there's very little supervision in the sense that there were no cops on the street. So the drug dealers were able to just have a heyday,鈥� Menzies told St. Louis on the Air. 鈥淎nd the big factor that has thrown everything out of whack is fentanyl. Nobody expected this to hit us so badly.鈥�
Approximately two-thirds of the nation鈥檚 overdose deaths were attributed to the synthetic opioid fentanyl. Ben Westhoff, the St. Louis-based author of Fentanyl, Inc., said fentanyl is much stronger than other opioids and is often used to cut other drugs.
鈥淭his is the third wave of the opioid epidemic following the pain pills like OxyContin and then heroin,鈥� Westhoff said. 鈥淏ut now you can't find pure heroin almost anywhere in the country. It's all cut with fentanyl because fentanyl is so cheap. It's made synthetically in a lab, and drug dealers adulterate not just heroin but meth, cocaine and in particular prescription pills [with it].鈥�
Medical fentanyl is a pain reliever that鈥檚 used safely in hospitals every day, Westhoff explained. Illicit fentanyl generally begins in labs in China and is then bought by cartels in Mexico that finish it and bring it to the American market. Because of how easily fentanyl can be manufactured, Menzies said, it鈥檚 nearly impossible to cut off the supply.
Fentanyl is now the common denominator of patients who come to ARCA for treatment, Menzies said.
鈥淚t's rare for us to find a urine specimen that is not contaminated with fentanyl. And this is causing complete chaos in the field, and we do not know how to react to it,鈥� Menzies said.
However, he added, some tools already at our disposal can be used to save people from overdose and addiction. And prevention, he said, is key.
Medications like Narcan are effective for reversing the effects of an opioid overdose. The drug, which comes in a nasal spray, has become more common as the opioid epidemic has continued to spread. But what many people aren鈥檛 as familiar with is Naltrexone.
Naltrexone is 鈥渁 preventative form of Narcan essentially,鈥� Westhoff said. 鈥淏asically, it makes it so you can't be affected by opioids at all.鈥�
Naltrexone lasts up to 25 days, while Narcan lasts more like 30 minutes to quickly help revive someone. The idea with Naltrexone is that if opioids don鈥檛 get users high, they have no reason to take them and can wean themselves off.
However, Menzies said, it鈥檚 hard to incentivize people to do that.
鈥淎ddiction is tricky. It's like asking people to stick to a diet and there鈥檚 junk food everywhere,鈥� he said. 鈥淪o asking them to stick to a diet that does not allow them to use opioids, it's not an easy task.鈥�
Menzies suggests giving people cash incentives for getting treatment.
鈥淲e have to make treatment attractive, giving them a small cash incentive as little as $1 a day, maybe a $25 gift card can work miracles to get them in that door, because they feel rewarded,鈥� he said. 鈥淭hey're not looking at the value of the cash, but just the fact that somebody is appreciating what they're doing.鈥�
Westhoff added that people often say the opioid epidemic is hopeless. But to him, people aren鈥檛 looking hard enough at the issue.
鈥淭he big problem right now is that we're not taking the opioid epidemic seriously, like we are, say, COVID,鈥� he said. 鈥淒rug deaths have killed more people than COVID, since the year 2000. And yet, when COVID hit, it was an all-hands-on-deck situation, so much money, so many resources were poured into it.鈥�
The opioid epidemic should be easier to handle, Westhoff posited, because we don鈥檛 have to wait for a vaccine like we did with the coronavirus. We already have the tools we need.
鈥淲e already have this drug Naltrexone which essentially functions as a vaccine. Not only that, we have other medication-assisted treatment drugs like methadone and buprenorphine,鈥� he said. 鈥淎nd so when people say, 鈥楾here's nothing we can do about this,鈥� when they throw their hands up, it's crazy. We just need to devote the resources and the outreach to the people who need help.鈥�
鈥�鈥� brings you the stories of St. Louis and the people who live, work and create in our region. The show is hosted by and produced by , , and . Jane Mather-Glass is our production assistant. The audio engineer is .
