According to data revealed, opioid overdose deaths among Cook County residents continue to occur at an extraordinary pace, with fatalities reaching an all-time high last year.
In 2022, 2,000 individuals died from opioid overdoses, shattering the previous high of 1,935 fatalities set the year before, according to the Cook County medical examiner's office. Around the start of lockdowns connected to COVID-19, those overdose deaths considerably increased, increasing by 42% between 2019 and 2020.
Since 2018, the number of overdose deaths in the county has increased almost annually. When 676 overdose deaths were reported in 2015, the number of opioid overdose deaths was a tiny fraction of what it is now.
Despite the regional and national attention the opioid epidemic has gotten, the director of the University of Illinois Chicago's Community Outreach Intervention Projects, which runs a mobile drug treatment facility, said it was "disheartening" to know that it was still raging. The state should also take into consideration permitting organizations to build overdose prevention centers where individuals may have their substances checked before receiving clean needles, he continued, and harm reduction efforts must be expanded.
The director went on to discuss how the internet may significantly contribute to the reduction of deadly overdoses. He explained how it is possible to develop relationships with individuals and make them aware of their drug usage by developing an interactive link, which would eventually help to stop the opioid problem. Although several organizations in Chicago are working together to address the problem in the city, some areas of the county still receive less assistance than others.
There are areas right outside of the city that are not necessarily being addressed because of a lack of resources. The vast majority of opioid overdoses last year 91% involved fentanyl, the synthetic drug that’s often mixed with heroin but is 50 times more potent, the medical examiner’s office said. Deaths in the county involving fentanyl have been rising yearly for nearly a decade, from 103 in 2015 to 1,825 last year.
The latest numbers from the medical examiner’s office reflect the opioid overdose epidemic that now claims the lives of more than 100,000 people in the U.S. every year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The increase in fentanyl in the drug supply and the isolation brought on the COVID-19-related lockdowns have both contributed to the pandemic. According to the CDC, drug overdoses are currently the main factor in injury-related fatalities. Since at least 2015, when there were 611 murders and 676 fatal overdoses in Cook County, the overdose rate has outpaced the murder rate.
Around 78% of the overdose deaths in Cook County last year were male. A little over 56% of the fatalities were African Americans. Whites made up roughly 29%, and Latinos somewhat less than 15%, according to the office. Chicago was the site of just over 70% of the county's opioid fatalities.
The medical examiner's office reported that those aged 50 to 59 made up 27% of the fatalities and were the age group most afflicted.
