EDITOR’S NOTE: Following is part I of a two-part series on the heroin public health crisis in southern West Virginia.
By SAMANTHA PERRY
Bluefield Daily Telegraph
BLUEFIELD, W.Va. — The deadly heroin cocktail killing scores of addicts in metro areas has made its way into the picturesque hills of southern West Virginia.
Police scanner traffic, word of mouth and comments from officials all point to the fact that fentanyl is responsible for a multitude of deaths across Mercer and surrounding counties.
“Anytime you put fentanyl in the mix with it, you’re going to see deaths,” Sgt. J.S. McCarty, with the Southern Regional Drug and Violent Crimes Task Force, said. “Not only are we seeing heroin and fentanyl mixed, we’re seeing straight fentanyl.”
McCarty said the data he has seen indicates overdoses may be up. While southern West Virginia has not experienced mass casualties like the Huntington area, the number of deaths attributed to heroin and fentanyl does seem to be on the increase.
Fentanyl is “a recipe for disaster,” McCarty said. “If carfentanil hits …”
The veteran trooper’s words trail off as he pauses for a moment before vocalizing the drug’s deadly consequences. “Ten milligrams (of carfentanil) is enough to kill a 15,000-pound African elephant. Less than a grain of salt is enough to kill a human being, It’s about 10,000 times more powerful than morphine. About 2,500 times more powerful than heroin.”
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Although southern West Virginia is seeing the light at the end of the tunnel with respect to the prescription pill epidemic, McCarty said this has opened up the market for heroin.
“When the pills start drying up, if you’re hooked on opioids, you have no choice but to switch to heroin,” McCarty said. “It’s opened up the door to the heroin market in West Virginia.”
A mother attending Southern Highlands Overdose Awareness Day event last week in Princeton knows fully the dangers of these deaths. She lost her daughter, nephew and niece to heroin.
“They all overdosed,” she said. “I fought it with my daughter for 16 years.”
The mom said her daughter started using heroin after she was kicked out of a methadone treatment program.
“They threw her out. She found out the next high was heroin,” the mother said. “She came to the house and her ams were black. She used to hate needles. We had to hold her down as a child to give her shots.”
The mom lost her daughter on June 7, 2016. She was 32 years old, and left behind a 6-year-old son.
The mother explains that the heroin was mixed with rat poison, which is what killed her daughter. “She called at 3 a.m. that day she died. She said, ‘Mom, if I don’t find God today I’m going to die.’ “
McCarty said addicts don’t know the ingredients of the substance they are injecting.
“It’s a roll of the dice anytime you shoot that into your arm,” he said. “It could be mostly fentanyl, it could be mostly baby powder. It could be 10 percent heroin, 20 percent fentanyl and 70 percent Ajax. You just don’t know.”
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Local law enforcement officials are also reporting an increase in overdoses.
“We go out on a lot of the overdoses.” Mercer County Sheriff’s Department Chief Deputy Joe Parks said. “We used to wait for the rescue squad to show up. Now our first response, if we find somebody unconscious and are told it’s an overdose, is to immediately administer Narcan. If it’s heroin, they immediately come out of it. Unfortunately, when there’s fentanyl, it has mixed results.”
Parks said the majority of unattended deaths he has responded to in recent years are overdoses. Paraphernalia at the scene usually verifies the death is drug related.
“Yes, there have absolutely been more overdoses in recent years,” Parks said. “For the unattended deaths that I have responded to on dayshift, the overdoses outnumber the unattended deaths of elderly people.”
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Mercer County Commissioner and Community Connections Director Greg Puckett calls the drug scourge a “catastrophic cultural failure.”
“It has forever changed our views on the world as we once knew it,” Puckett said. “If this were 9/11, we would have thrown ever single thing at it to help fix the problem. Instead, we will see nearly one-half million people lose their lives in the next 20 years.”
Puckett said West Virginia is inundated with addiction, but no one wants to change.
‘We’re still a pill-driven addiction society,” he said. “There are still too many pills readily available on the street. But heroin is here, and it’s going to increase.”
Puckett said they are now seeing a rise in theft numbers of elderly individuals. Addicts are stealing in an attempt to satisfy their cravings.
“Once the pills start going down, and you are getting them off the streets, it’s a supply-and-demand issue,” Pucket said. “And that’s when you see start seeing heroin, overdoses and public health concerns.”
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McCarty said another deadly problem on the horizon is marijuana laced with fentanyl, heroin and carfentanil. He said intelligence reports from source cities — areas where marijuana in southern West Virginia originates — indicates this is now a problem.
“It’s important that parents know the dangers out there,” McCarty said. “In the 1980s, Nancy Reagan had the ‘Just Say No’ campaign. ‘Just Say No’ is not enough now.
“The main message for parents and grandparents now is that there is stuff out there that will kill you the first time you use it,” McCarty said.
McCarty said the national average age of a youth’s first time experimenting with illegal drugs is 8 to 11 years old.
“Two years ago, the most dangerous thing for a teen was crashing their car,” McCarty said. “Now, it’s becoming hooked on opioids and dying of an overdose.”
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Puckett said the 20-year problem with drug abuse in our region has resulted in it being looked at as the norm, and not a crisis.
“It’s a way of life,” he said. “To fix it, I hate to say this, but we’re going to have to deal with a society that has a lot of martyrs — a lot of loss, a lot of tragedy. It’s going to continue to happen until we see a new norm.”
As bad as the overdose problem is, Puckett fears the worst is yet to come.
“I don’t want to sound pessimistic, but I’ve looked at the statistics,” he said. “Statistics don’t lie, and we don’t have enough money to combat it.”
Coming: Part two of the two-part series on the heroin pubic health crisis in southern West Virginia.
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