Hospitals around the state treated more than 11-thousand-500 people suffering an opioid or heroin overdose in 2013, according to the latest numbers released this week. That’s up more than 50-percent in the last decade. In Nevada County, there were 15 E-R visits, 27 hospitalizations, and 5 deaths. From 2006 to 2013, there were 400 overdoses. But the per-capita rate, of 5 per 10-thousand residents, is significantly higher than Placer, El Dorado, Yuba, Sutter and Sacramento Counties. Only Butte County was higher in the region. Health and Human Services Director, Michael Heggarty, says it’s mostly heroin overdoses. He says the growing abuse of prescription drugs has resulted in a tightening of guidelines in the medical community, making those drugs harder to get, with more people turning to heroin…

click to listen to Michael Heggarty

Heggarty says heroin is also less expensive, compared to buying prescription drugs on the street. But it’s unreliable…

click to listen to Michael Heggarty

The rising overdose trend also explains an increase in the number of California infants born suffering from withdrawal from heroin or prescription painkillers.
Heggarty says Nevada County is exploring the distribution and use of a drug called naloxone that can reverse overdose effects almost immediately.