This is What America's Opioid Epidemic Looks Like in DuPage County: Coroner

Deaths due to opioid abuse have increased at least 53 percent over the past year in DuPage County, the coroner’s office announced Tuesday.

“The numbers are startling and show that we continue to have a serious problem of addiction and death related to legal and illegal opioids,” Coroner Richard Jorgensen stated in a release.

In 2016, 78 people in total were documented as having suffered from opioid-related deaths. While the majority of those deaths — 36 — were from heroin alone, 26 were a result of a heroin and fentanyl mixture, which Jorgensen said is becoming increasingly popular.

“There is...a trend toward the mixture of the opioid fentanyl into the heroin, and the emergence of fentanyl analogues in the Chicagoland area,” Jorgensen said in the release. “These fentanyl analogues are very strong and we have identified our first death due to carfentanyl, which is 10,000 times stronger than morphine.”

Twenty-six deaths as a result of opioid mixtures is up 370 percent from last year’s figures, which documented seven such deaths.

Sixteen people also died from fentanyl alone, Jorgensen said. That’s a 100 percent increase from last year’s eight.

Jorgensen said his data doesn’t reflect the lives saved by police, fire and medical personnel using the opioid antidote naloxone, which is highly effective.

“If this life-saving drug had not been widely used, the number of deaths would be much higher,” he said.

The number of deaths from heroin alone were the same in both 2016 and 2015.

“These numbers reveal that our work is not done in the quest to eradicate this epidemic,” Jorgensen said. “We must continue to bring education to our citizens about this problem to prevent the use of opioids, treat those who are addicted and eradicate the supply of illegal drugs.”

To read up on the country’s opioid epidemic, visit the National Institute on Drug Abuse’s website here.

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