Pubdate: Wed, 30 Jan 2002
Source: Santa Fe New Mexican (NM)
Copyright: 2002 The Santa Fe New Mexican
Contact:  http://www.sfnewmexican.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/695
Author: Deborah Davis

DROP IN OVERDOSES HARD TO PINPOINT, EXPERTS SAY

Weeks after the state Department of Health proclaimed that Rio Arriba 
County's drug overdose deaths are the lowest in seven years, the 
department is saying those numbers are too preliminary to release.

A Health Department report out today shows the number of illicit drug 
overdoses in Rio Arriba County dropped from 18 in 1999 to 16 in 2000. 
However, the agency gave no data for 2001 because it says its data is 
too preliminary to release.

The report says only that preliminary data from the first six months 
of 2001 suggest the rates are continuing to drop.

However, the department had already declared in a news release 
earlier this month that only five people died from overdoses in Rio 
Arriba County in 2001. At the time, Health Secretary Alex Valdez 
credited the department's aggressive intervention programs for the 
decline.

Federal and state funding to deal with longstanding drug problems was 
stepped up in recent years after reports that Rio Arriba County had 
the nation's highest per capita rate of deaths from overdoses of 
heroin and other illegal drugs. The latest report says New Mexico 
most likely continues to have the highest rate of any state.

Various other Northern New Mexico counties have recorded the second- 
highest rate of overdose deaths in the last few years, according to 
Mike Landen, an epidemiologist and co-author of the report.

In Santa Fe County, which has a population nearly three times larger 
than Rio Arriba's, the number of overdoses fluctuated from seven in 
1997 up to 13 in 1998, 19 in 1999 and 18 in 2000, the Health 
Department said. Two state agencies - the Health Department and the 
Office of the Medical Investigator - officially track overdose rates 
in New Mexico. The Health Department only records illicit-drug 
overdoses while OMI includes overdoses related to both illicit and 
prescription drugs.

OMI's data supports the Health Department's conclusions that 2001 had 
fewer overdose deaths in Rio Arriba County than the previous year, 
according to Tim Stepetic, OMI spokesmen.

The Health Department's main focus in writing its report was to 
prove, first, that the bulk of overdose deaths are related to 
illicit-drug overdoses, according to Landen.

Second, the department wanted to show the number of overdoses related 
to prescription drugs has remained stable over the years while the 
illicit-drug deaths increased and are now declining, according to 
Landen.

The report says heroin caused 44 percent of the illicit-drug-overdose 
deaths between 1996 and 1998, and another 44 percent were caused by 
people taking more than one drug.

The national data, last compiled for 1998, lags behind the state's 
information. In 1998, New Mexico had the highest drug overdose rate 
in the nation - twice as high as Oregon, the next closest state. From 
1996 to 1998, the national rate was 2.2 deaths per 100,000 people 
while New Mexico's annual rate was 9.4 deaths.

"I don't think things have changed that much for 1999," Landen said. 
"It's doubtful that New Mexico will have dropped below first place."

Pinpointing exactly where these deaths have occurred is tricky. The 
Health Department and OMI track data only by county, so there is no 
way of determining how many of the overdoses occurred in city limits 
versus unincorporated areas. "It's very difficult for any one person 
to say that crime has gone done, that ODs have gone down in a certain 
area," said Espanola Police Chief Richard Guillen. "I really can't 
tell if there's been a drop in Espanola."

Mike Giddings, director of Amistad's drug-prevention and treatment 
program, said people in Espanola have various opinions on whether the 
overdose rates are decreasing. He believes the rates have dropped.

"Normally, when there is an OD, the hospital calls us, so we can do 
some intervention, and our phone calls have dropped significantly in 
the last year," Giddings said.

Exploring why people overdosed on drugs could be significant to the 
state, but that information is nearly impossible to extract from 
OMI's 30-year-old computer system, according to Stepetic.

OMI collects information on past medical history and general 
circumstances around a person's overdose death, but it can only 
retrieve the information from the computer by looking up each case 
and reading the data case by case, he said. For example, it cannot 
complete a computer search on how many people died after being 
released from jail.

"We're getting a new system in place by the end of the year that will 
allow us to call up the information that everyone would like," 
Stepetic said. "It's frustrating to have it buried in the system now."
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