These HV Counties Lead In Opioid, Fentanyl Deaths: Report

HUDSON VALLEY, NY — While Dutchess County has the highest rates of opioid and other drug overdose deaths in the region, Rockland County has the lowest in the state, according to a tracker based on federal health data.

Thursday is International Overdose Awareness Day, created to honor the lives of individuals lost to overdose, and to recognize the people, providers and programs that work to reduce overdoses and the stigma that is attached to them. Westchester County will mark the day with an event at 5:30 p.m.

A study published in The Lancet last year found the North American opioid crisis was driven by insufficient regulation of the pharmaceutical and health care industries, enabling a “profit-driven quadrupling of opioid prescribing” for a broad range of chronic, non-cancer pain conditions.

As a result, hundreds of thousands of people have fatally overdosed on prescription opioids and millions more became addicted, the researchers said. As a result, heroin markets became saturated with synthetics, including the more deadly and cheaper fentanyl.

There were six times more drug overdose deaths in 2021 than in 1999, according to U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data. More than 75 percent of the nearly 107,000 drug overdose deaths in 2021 involved an opioid or synthetic opioid. Since 1999, more than a million people nationwide have died of drug overdoses, according to CDC data.

A data visualization by the San Francisco Chronicle shows overdose deaths per 100,000 residents and the share of deaths that involve fentanyl and other synthetic opioids.

Overall, in the U.S., the overdose death rate was 32.3 per 100,000 residents in 2022, up from 20.6 in 2018 — and fentanyl was involved in 68 percent of them, compared to 47 percent four years before.

In New York, the counties with the most overdoses in 2022 were Bronx, Sullivan, Broome, Chemung and Monroe. The five counties with the least were Westchester, Nassau, Saratoga, Ontario and Rockland.

Drug overdoses are worse per 100,000 residents in the mid-Hudson than in the lower Hudson Valley, according to the Chronicle. In Rockland County, the rate actually dipped slightly between 2018 and 2022.

Here's how the counties in the Hudson Valley stack up:

1. Sullivan County: The drug overdose death rate was 56.5 people per 100,000 residents in 2022. That’s up from a rate of 37.1 per 100,000, 75 percent of which were fentanyl-related, in 2018. In 2022 fentanyl involvement had risen to 87 percent.
2. Dutchess County: The drug overdose death rate was 41.3 people per 100,000 residents in 2022. That’s up from a rate of 31.6. 73 percent of ODs were fentanyl-related, in 2018. In 2022 fentanyl involvement had risen to 81 percent.
3. Ulster: The drug overdose death rate was 37.8 per 100,000 residents in 2022. That’s up from a rate of 30.8 per 100,000, 55 percent of which were fentanyl-related, in 2018. By 2022 fentanyl involvement had risen to 80 percent of deaths.
4. Orange: The drug overdose death rate was 34 per 100,000 residents in 2022. That’s up from a rate of 31.9 per 100,000, 61 percent of which were fentanyl-related, in 2018. By 2022 fentanyl involvement had risen to 84 percent.
5. Putnam: The drug overdose death rate was 22.4 per 100,000 residents in 2022. That’s up from a rate of 16.2 people per 100,000, 69 percent of which were fentanyl-related, in 2018. By 2022 fentanyl involvement had risen to 73 percent of overdose deaths.
6. Westchester: The drug overdose death rate was 17.8 per 100,000 residents in 2022. That’s up from a rate of 15.1, 57 percent of which were fentanyl-related, in 2018. By 2022 fentanyl involvement had risen to 67 percent.
7. Rockland: The drug overdose death rate was 12.4 per 100,000 residents in 2022. That’s down from a rate of 12.6, 56 percent of which were fentanyl-related, in 2018. By 2022 fentanyl involvement had risen to 79 percent of overdose deaths.

Westchester County Executive George Latimer will recognize International Overdose Awareness Day Thursday. The event was created to honor the lives of individuals lost to overdose, and to recognize the people, providers and programs in Westchester County, and New York State, that work to reduce overdoses and the stigma that is attached to them.

"Overdose deaths can be prevented, and in Westchester County, we are doing everything we can to stop death by overdose," Latimer said in a news release. "It isn’t always easy to speak up if you think a family member or friend is struggling with addiction, but if you let that intimidation get the best of you, the result could be incredibly tragic. On International Overdose Awareness Day, let us come together with our community partners and organizations to stop overdose deaths in Westchester."

WHEN: 5:30 p.m. Aug. 31
WHERE: City of White Plains Library Plaza, 100 Martine Avenue, White Plains