An alarming trend is showing up in Issaquah. Drug overdoses, particularly from heroin and prescription drugs, are on the rise.
A graph presented at a joint city council/school board meeting March 27 depicts a huge spike in calls for overdoses particularly in the past two years, with the largest spike in people between the ages of 19 and 50.
Greg Tryon, deputy chief of operations for Eastside Fire & Rescue, who prepared the graph, said most of the calls are either for alcohol or opiate overdoses.
In 2012 within the area of the Issaquah School District, there were 31 overdoses in the 19-30 age group, compared to 16 in 2009. In the age group 31-50, there were 25 overdoses in 2012 compared to 15 in 2009.
Within the city of Issaquah, there were 18 overdoses in the 19-31 age group in 2012 compared to eight in 2009, and in the 31-50 age group there were 15 overdoses in 2012 compared to seven in 2009.
Tryon added that past data indicates that 7 to 10 percent of cardiac arrest calls are overdose related.
The reality that there is a heroin problem in Issaquah/Sammamish is no different from any other community, said Jerry Blackburn, director of early recovery services with Lakeside Milam. Blackburn also teaches at Bellevue College in the chemical dependency counseling program. His focus is on adolescent drug abuse.
In recent years, he has seen a huge increase in the use of prescription opiates, or the oxycodone family. Also called opioids, the medications are prescribed for pain and include hydrocodone (e.g. Vicodin), oxycodone (e.g. OxyContin, Percocet), morphine (e.g. Kadian, Avinza) and codeine.
The National Institute on drug abuse states “they reduce the intensity of pain signals reaching the brain and affect those brain areas controlling emotion, which diminishes the effects of a painful stimulus.”
Part of the reason for the increase comes from more prescriptions being written for the drugs. Making things worse is that over time users develop a tolerance to the drugs, meaning more pills or a higher dosage is needed for the same result.
On the street, one pill – an 80 mg. tablet of oxycodone – will sell for $80 to $100. Once this becomes economically unfeasible, addicts turn to street heroin, considerably cheaper, yet chemically comparable.
Though many residents of Issaquah and Sammamish are well off and have prescription opiates in their medicine cabinets, even the “rich” kids end up buying the street stuff when mom and dad’s prescriptions run out.
Blackburn said heroin is just now trending again, and “kids are coming into direct contact with heroin.”
Of the 100 adult beds at Lakeside Milam Recovery Center in Kirkland, about 30 percent of Blackburn’s patients are 19 to 25-years-old, with opiates being the primary problem.
“Adolescent drug use in all its forms is consistent in all communities,” Blackburn said. “The only thing that changes is community perception of that reality.”
The preferred method of ingesting heroin these days is smoking it, Blackburn said. It also can be snorted or injected with a syringe. He said the users he’s known, think shooting up with a needle is “gross,” so they smoke it, which can be just as deadly.
Blackburn said it shouldn’t take a tragedy to bring this problem into public awareness.
He said it is the mission of organizations such as The Drug Free Community Coalition is to reduce alcohol, marijuana and prescription drug abuse among teens. On April 20, as part of the Issaquah clean-up day, the coalition is going to focus on the area around the skate park, which is considered a magnet for youth with drug issues.
“The kids around there are struggling; they need help,” Blackburn said.
Visit the coalition’s Facebook page by searching for Issaquah Community Drug Free Coalation.
