Overdose cases continue to surge in Santa Cruz County

SANTA CRUZ – Acute drug-related deaths continued to surge this year in Santa Cruz County and local experts are sounding the alarm as they seek to bring attention to the troubling trend.

SafeRx Santa Cruz County and the Integrated Behavioral Health Action Coalition held their fifth annual combined drug trend meeting this week to share their most up-to-date information with the public, along with the programs and initiatives seeking to combat the issue.

The two organizations specialize in behavioral health and substance use disorders.

Despite ongoing prevention efforts, Stephany Fiore from the County Sheriff-Coroner’s Office said acute drug-induced deaths this year are on pace to exceed 2021 levels – which marked a recent peak – driven in large part by methamphetamine and fentanyl overdoses.

“Already for the first three quarters of 2022, we have reached the level of 2020,” Fiore said. “So we are going to at least equal, if not surpass, 2021 this year that we’re in.”

Trends and demographics

While the number of overdoses and deaths is striking, local experts say it is part of a recent but persistent regional trend that began in 2020.

According to data from the Santa Cruz County Sheriff-Coroner’s Office, there were 57 acute drug-related deaths in 2019. That number rose to 61 in 2020 and again to 95 in 2021. The office recorded 64 deaths from January to September this year.

“Over the years, the prescription drug use (resulting in overdose and death) has disappeared and more of the illicit drugs have come to the forefront with methamphetamine reaching a peak in 2020,” Fiore said. “Starting mid 2020 to 2021, we started seeing a surge in fentanyl.”

Fiore said there were five fentanyl deaths in 2019. That number jumped to 19 in 2020, then 42 in 2021 and is at 39 through the first nine months of this year.

She noted that in recent years the number of deaths from the opioid has also been skewing more to younger age groups.

Another speaker, Santa Cruz County Deputy Health Officer and Emergency Medical Services Director David Ghilarducci, highlighted the geographic trends for both fatal and non-fatal overdoses in the region.

Ghilarducci said an acceleration in the rate of drug overdoses has been occurring since the arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly around the cities of Watsonville and Santa Cruz and especially in the downtown Santa Cruz area.

According to Ghilarducci, the majority of people overdosing in Santa Cruz, San Benito and Monterey counties recover thanks, in part, to broad efforts to distribute naloxone – an emergency treatment for narcotic overdoses.

“This is a multidisciplinary problem,” Ghilarducci said. “When we look at this problem, we look at it from a perspective of … making sure that we are targeting interventions to those that are most vulnerable in our communities.”

Prevention and interventions

In that effort, there was much to be reported.

SafeRx Program Manager Rita Hewitt said data gathered from recent surveys helped inform the coalition’s focus on prevention, intervention and access to treatment in county youth and young adults.

Hewitt said SafeRx collaborated with regional partners to develop a “Let’s Talk” booklet to serve as a mental health and substance use guide. With help from the county’s Office of Education, SafeRx managed to distribute more than 2,500 of these booklets to all ninth grade families across the county this fall.

It also engaged with the education office to develop a policy for administering Narcan – a brand name for naloxone – in emergency situations. It has also worked with Watsonville Community Hospital and Dignity Health/Dominican Hospital both to distribute naloxone to emergency rooms and also create a bridge to ongoing care through the use of the addiction treatment drug buprenorphine.