CINCINNATI — In 2021, the state reported 5,300 overdose deaths, according to the Ohio Department of Health. That’s up nearly 300 from 2020.
Health and law enforcement officials say fentanyl plays a large part in those deaths, and after a spike in drug deaths recently in one southwest Ohio county, officials sent out a public health alert.
Sarah Coyne is a team navigator, or peer mentor, for the Hamilton County Quick Response Team. It’s a job she took on because she knew firsthand how important it is to help people get in recovery.
“Alcohol was really my big, big substance choice,” said Coyne. “I couldn’t do anything without it.”
For years, she lived in denial of her addiction. Despite doing jail time and getting in trouble nothing seemed to stop her from drinking. It wasn’t until she found out that she was pregnant during treatment that she decided to become sober.
“I was a single parent, so I knew that if I didn’t get it right, he doesn’t have that other parent to go to, so I’m going to lose my kid,” she said. “And that’s something that I could ever live with.”
It was during her recovery process that Coyne knew she wanted to help others who also struggled with addiction. So she joined the Hamilton County Addiction Response Coalition Quick Response Team. It’s a group of trained professionals and law enforcement who help connect people with recovery services.
“To just be able to tell somebody like hey I get it,” she said. “And then they’re like yeah okay, whatever. Then I’m like I’m in recovery. And a lot of times just being able to say that somebody is like Oh.”
One of the biggest issues plaguing Hamilton County right now is overdose deaths. Sixteen people died between Sept. 30 and Oct. 5. So far in 2022, 267 people have died from drug overdoses in Hamilton County, according to the health department.
Commissioner Denise Driehaus, chair of the county Addiction Response Coalition, believes fentanyl is the cause.
“Fentanyl comes into the community at a higher volume, or it’s a different type of drug or what we think is happening here is that in some of these cases people have been using for instance cocaine and fentanyl hasn’t been mixed into cocaine in the past,” said Driehaus.
Between May and September of this year, the Ohio DEA seized more than 65 kilograms of fentanyl powder and 87,000 fentanyl-laced pills.
That’s enough to kill more than four million people. Hamilton County recently issued a public health alert warning the public about the rise in overdoses.
“The purpose of the alert is to make people aware so that they change their behaviors,” she said. “So don’t use alone.”
She also added to use fentanyl test strips as an extra precaution.
That’s why the Quick Response Team is out in the community making sure they’re helping as many people as possible, all in hopes of preventing less overdose deaths.
“We’re in the areas where a lot of these overdoses are happening trying to hand out Narcan, trying to hand out Fentanyl test strips, trying to educate the community on the danger of Fentanyl being in a lot of substances now,” said Coyne.
Hamilton County isn’t the only county with an OD Alert. In June, Montgomery County created an OD Surge Alert to help residents know when and where there are overdoses and how to get help.
