REVERE, Mass. — There’s a bad batch of heroin killing people on the North Shore. Over the weekend, eight deaths - and it didn’t stop there, all after fentanyl laced heroin hit the streets.
The City of Revere’s outreach program is one of the first in the area to prioritize the opioid issue, opening an office just to focus on that, but there’s still much work to be done, and an urgent warning to users tonight.
In addition to the seven weekend deaths, Revere alone has seen 14 overdoses in the past week, five of which came in just the past 24 hours.
“That could be anything from the type of drug that they’re using to the potency,” Julia Newhall, the manager of Revere’s Substance Abuse Disorder Initiative said.
Revere has been leading the attack on the opioid epidemic, and was the first city in the nation to put Narcan in its police cars. This new program launched in October has been extremely successful, overdose deaths already down 60 percent this year.
But the problem persists, especially with contaminated batches like the one currently spread across the area.
“In 2016 alone we reversed 87 overdoses, so that’s 87 lives, and one life you can’t put a number on that,” Newhall said.
Police on the North Shore say the drugs they’re seeing are startlingly powerful—the fentanyl sometimes 100 time more powerful than morphine, and up to 50 times more potent than heroin itself.
According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, just ¼ milligram of fentanyl can kill you.
People in Revere’s drug initiative are working on primary prevention - getting into middle and high schools to prevent drug use before it starts and supplying Narcan to the public.
“I know I work with other communities in our other grant work that we do and were the envy in terms of having something like this in place that people can come in here. We have our drop in center that’s open every evening free of charge no appointment necessary and they can get Narcan and talk to a recovery coach,” Newhall said.
With the deaths on the North Shore in the last week, both police and outreach programs have their work cut out for them.
“We feel that we’ve made a lot of strides, but there’s still a lot of work to do,” Newhall said.
Because of this deadly drug, public health officials are asking people to become familiar with the symptoms of fentanyl overdose, saying its more likely to result in death or severe symptoms and to call 911 if someone is unresponsive, has trouble breathing, is vomiting, or has pinpoint pupils.