Kentucky ranks 4th in the nation for fatal overdoses amid pandemic surge, CDC report says
Kentucky ranked fourth in the nation for its rate of overdose deaths between April 2020 and April 2021, according to new data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
During that 12-month period, 2,319 people fatally overdosed in the commonwealth — 52 per 100,000 people — which represents a more than 54% increase from the previous 12-month period. Nationwide, 100,306 people died of an overdose during that stretch of time — the highest ever recorded in a year, surpassing the previous year’s 97,990 deaths. Tennessee, West Virginia and the District of Columbia were the only places whose death rates surpassed the commonwealth’s.
The widespread use of opioids, the more potent synthetic opioids such as fentanyl, and methamphetamine have long dogged Kentucky, which hit its first fatal overdose peak in 2017. Notably in 2018, the overall fatal overdose rate dropped 15% for the first time since 2013. But the social and economic fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic hit the states hard, and in 2020, the rate of people dying from drug use in Kentucky doubled, surpassing 2017.
The CDC’s new provisional numbers, which include the first four months of 2021, portend the state and country may reach an even more devastating deadly peak this year.
“This is an epidemic that has ravaged our commonwealth for far too long,” Gov. Andy Beshear said in a Wednesday statement.
Though the reasons why Kentucky’s deadly rate is skyrocketing now are multi-faceted, it was initially “fueled by greedy opioid companies flooding our communities with these drugs,” said Beshear, who as state Attorney General, sued several pharmaceutical companies for saturating the state with pills.
Now, as the pandemic exacerbated the pull of addiction for many, “people are still struggling to cope with job loss, isolation and general widespread anxiety,” said Matt Brown, senior vice president of administration at Addiction Recovery Care, a network of addiction recovery facilities across the commonwealth.
The widespread availability of more potent opioids such as fentanyl is putting more lives at risk, he said.
In recent years, Kentucky has charted a significant uptick in the use of illicit fentanyl and its analogs. In 2020, fentanyl played a part in 70% of all cases (opioids, generally, accounted for 90% of deaths), according to the state Office of Drug Control Policy. That was up from 2018, when fentanyl was responsible for 61% of all overdose deaths in the state, and in 2017, 52% of deaths.
Kentucky, as a whole, has aggressively fought back. In 2019, the University of Kentucky was awarded an unprecedented large federal grant of nearly $90 million for its HEALing Communities study, which seeks to to reduce opioid deaths by 40% in eight Kentucky counties. Recognizing the destructive role health care providers have played in overprescribing opioids, some physicians in Kentucky have sought to dramatically reduce the number of opioid prescriptions leaving their offices. Between 2011 and 2020, opioid prescriptions in Kentucky have decreased by more than 46%, according to the American Medical Association.
Meanwhile, the availability of local addiction recovery programs has expanded at near record speed in the last decade. Earlier this summer, a 750-bed Addiction Recovery Care recovery-to-work facility, touted by Beshear as the largest in the country, opened its doors in Springfield.
Through a state, health care and business community collaborative, Kentucky also launched the Kentucky Transformational Employment Program in 2020 to help employers address addiction, and buoy employees in active recovery to get and retain jobs.
“As a state, we are investing more in mental health care and we’re providing more dollars than ever before to treatment facilities to help them expand services,” Beshear said Wednesday.
“But there are also things we can do as people, including checking in on folks we haven’t seen in awhile, or having that tough conversation when people need to seek help,” he said. “I believe there is a better tomorrow out there, but it’s going to take all of us working together to stop these deadly drugs from reaching our people.”
This story was originally published November 18, 2021 at 1:52 PM with the headline "Kentucky ranks 4th in the nation for fatal overdoses amid pandemic surge, CDC report says."
