Marion County drug deaths up in 2012

Nineteen people suffered drug-related deaths in Marion County in 2012 — nearly double the number from 2011, according to statistics released from Oregon’s state medical examiner.

That makes the county one of three in Oregon where drug-related deaths rose last year, while the state as a whole saw a 7 percent drop.

Heroin deaths in Oregon climbed 2.5 percent to 147, the highest number on record. In Marion County, heroin deaths doubled from five to 10 in 2012.

The rise in heroin overdoses is due in part to Oregon’s crackdown on prescription drug abuse, police said.

In 2009, the state legislature passed a law that created a database for doctors and pharmacies to track prescriptions for drugs such as Oxycontin, Vicodin and Methadone. Doctors started uploading information to the Prescription Drug Monitoring Program in July 2011.

By 2012, prescription drug overdose in Oregon dropped by 12 percent.

The problem is that some prescription holders have switched to heroin.

“A lot of people get on (opioids) legitimately from an injury or those types of things,” Salem police Lt. Mark Keagle said. “If people become addicted to Oxycontin, and they cannot get it, then it pushes them to find some medicine or some substance that will keep them from going through withdrawals.”

Prescription Oxycontin commands a street price of up to $60 per pill in Salem, Keagle said. That makes heroin a cheaper alternative.

Unlike prescription pills that stay potent for years, heroin, which is harvested from poppy plants twice a year, loses its potency over a period of months, Salem police Lt. Steve Birr said.

“We can tell when there is a new harvest because we will suddenly have people dropping dead from overdoses,” Birr said. “What got them high one day will kill them the next.”

Also out of sync with state statistics is the number of deaths associated with methamphetamine use in Marion county. Half of the deaths in Marion County were connected to methamphetamine, but the statewide percentage was at 40 percent.

In Multnomah County, where about half of the state’s drug-related deaths occur, methamphetamine accounted for 27 percent.

Dr. Karen Gunson, the state’s medical examiner, thought the proximity of the county’s major cities to Interstate 5 could be one reason why methamphetamine use was higher.

I-5 is a major highway for drug traffickers smuggling methamphetamine from Mexico, which is where most of the meth sold in the U.S. is manufactured, Gunson said. The proximity of cities such as Salem, Keizer and Woodburn to the interstate make them easy points of distribution.