In the Northern Shenandoah Valley, the epidemic of addiction to heroin and other opioid drugs is showing no signs of slowing down.
For the six localities that make up this area – Winchester and the counties of Frederick, Clarke, Shenandoah, Page and Warren – data shows that halfway through the year, overdose rates are at the full-year totals seen in 2015 and 2016.
There was only one death from a drug overdose in 2012, which has been marked as the beginning of the opioid problem, according to data from the Northwest Regional Drug Task Force, and that number jumped to 21 in 2013. In 2014, there were 33 opioid overdose deaths, and there were 30 fatal overdoses in both 2015 and 2016.
In past years, non-fatal overdoses rose dramatically as well. In 2012 there were only 18 non-fatal overdoses, but by 2013, there were 100, Cummings said. “Those numbers decreased in the next two years, with 73 non-fatal overdoses in 2014 and 55 in 2015. That number more than doubled in 2016, with 125 reported non-fatal overdoses in the area.
In 2017 to date, there have been 28 fatal opioid overdoses, and, as of July 5, there have been 105 non-fatal opioid overdoses.
Lauren Cummings, executive director of the Northern Shenandoah Valley Substance Abuse Coalition, said the trend in non-fatal overdose rate is undeniably bleak. “We had hoped that we would never exceed our numbers that we saw in 2013,”Cummings said of the non-fatal overdose rate. “We’re on track to possibly even, unfortunately, doubling our numbers from 2013.”
Briahnna M. Brown 