Fatal overdoses were still elevated in 2021

Medina County recorded 25 fatal overdoses last year, the highest total in any of the past four years. The number of overdoses narrowly edged the tally of 24 recorded in 2020, according to local officials. Ongoing effects of the COVID-19 pandemic combined with a lack of mental health services have played a large hand in that outcome, Medina County Coroner Lisa Deranek said. "You have the isolation with many people, no question about that," she said. "There's many, many young adults who have turned to these substances out of isolation and just feeling an unbelievable amount of stress. It's a very stressful time to be a young adult. While the (mental health) services we do have available in Medina County do a tremendous job, the amount of services we have is woefully inadequate. "We don't have a mental health facility in Medina County, which is why so many of those patients have to be transferred to Akron. Mental illness and depression is also something that doesn't show up like a more apparent physical illness. It's not something you can just fix with pills. You need to talk to people to get to the bottom of it. I think that not happening enough is a big part of why we're seeing these (overdose) numbers." After Medina County's overdose deaths reached record heights of 30 and 39 in 2016 and 2017, respectively, they declined to 19 and 15 in the next two years as prescription regulation and public awareness of addiction danger grew. A recent study found that fentanyl overdoses have become the leading cause of death among U.S. residents ages 18-45 with the powerful opioid killing roughly 79,000 people in that group across 2020 and 2021. That data came from the opioid awareness organization Families Against Fentanyl, which also concluded that COVID-19 claimed the lives of 53,000 Americans ages 18-45 over the past two years. Fentanyl overdoses reportedly surpassed COVID-19, suicide and car crashes as the leading cause of death for the demographic. In Medina County, fentanyl reportedly contributed to 22 out of 25 overdose deaths last year. In 2020 and 2019, it was 20 out of 24 and 11 out of 15. While heroin often served as the base drug to be mixed with fentanyl during earlier opioid epidemic years, that trend has turned heavily toward methamphetamine or simply ingesting fentanyl by itself, said Medina County Coroner's Office investigator Aly Dipaolo. "A lot of the time now it's just fentanyl," she said. "Sometimes you'll see what we call a speedball where it'll have meth, coke, fentanyl and something to cut it with. Sometimes that's just baking soda. We've seen many instances of (fentanyl) standing on its own and it being mixed with something else. The (deaths) were pretty steady during the year. There wasn't really a major surge or anything like that." The Medina County Opiate Response Team, a collaboration between the Medina County Sheriff's Office and Alternate Paths behavior health services, revealed Monday it had logged 352 referrals in 2021. The majority of those came from Medina County Jail but a steady stream from individuals out in the community was also recorded throughout the year. "It seems as if people are under the belief that if they mix fentanyl with a stimulant like meth, it will prevent them from overdosing," said Deranek. "Obviously, that's not true but that seems to be the line of thought. It's a pretty dangerous line of thought." According to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, Mexico and China are the primary sources for fentanyl flowing into America, with India also becoming a bigger exporter in recent years. U.S. fentanyl deaths across all age groups essentially doubled from 32,754 to 64,178 in just two years between April 2019 and April 2021, according to Families Against Fentanyl. Contact reporter Jonathan Delozier at (330) 721-4050 or jdelozier@medina-gazette.com.