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With three deaths due to opioid overdoses in Westford this year, the town’s League of Women Voters is sponsoring a panel discussion on the drug’s effect, on Wednesday, Sept. 27.
Termed an epidemic by public health and governmental officials across the state, opioid addiction has exploded since 2000 when there were only 379 overdose-related deaths in Massachusetts. Last year there were 2,107 fatal overdoses across the state.
“Westford is not immune to substance abuse,” said Superintendent Everett V. Olsen.” Personally, I think this is the most dangerous issue in the country.”
Olsen, along with Health Director Jeffrey Stephens, Police Chief Thomas McEnaney, Substance Abuse Prevention Coordinator Ray Peachey, Advanced Life Support Coordinator Zachary Driscoll, and Westford Against Substance Abuse President Sue Higgins, will be panelists at the League event.
The event will be telecast live on Comcast channels 9 and 99 and Verizon channels 33 and 34.
Out of 14 counties, Middlesex which includes Westford and the city of Lowell is hardest hit with 400 overdose deaths in 2016, as compared to Franklin County with 15, for example.
According to Middlesex District Attorney Marian Ryan’s office, the Westford deaths all involved males, ages 58, 23, and 41. There were three overdose deaths in Westford in 2016, as well, according to the state Department of Public Health.
People are coping with the addiction in quiet desperation, according to Stephens.
“There are people that many of us know that have to fight this very quietly,” he said.
The addiction often begins with the prescription of the Oxycodone opiate to relieve pain caused by a legitimate health care issue. Eventually the user gets hooked on the drug because he takes it longer than necessary, or a family member with access to the medicine cabinet gets a hold of the pills and uses them to perhaps numb emotional pain. The users crush the pills and snort the powder or dissolve it in water and inject it. This overrides the time release mechanism giving the user the full effect of the drug all at once.
When the prescription runs out or the pills are gone, the user turns to heroin – a cheap street drug readily available in cities such as Lowell and Lawrence.
But heroin’s strength can be unpredictable, and its synthetic counterpart, fentanyl, is even deadlier, creating a dangerous health risk to the addicts.
About six years ago, when Stephens was an inspector in the town of Fitchburg, he turned onto a street and saw a man lying in the road, overdosing.
“He was dying,” said Stephens, who jumped out of his truck to assist the man and call the fire department.
Stephens said he doesn’t know what the man’s fate was after Emergency Medical Technicians transported him to the hospital, but the man “was alive when they left.”
The anecdote illustrates the severity of the epidemic, when around any bend, there could be someone overdosing on an opiate drug.
That’s why schools have incorporated health curricula beginning at the middle school level.
“Middle School is a very important grade level to start it,” said Olsen. “We always tell the principals to make sure we stay connected with the kids. It’s very important to be observant of people…to find out what’s going on with their lives…”
“The Opioid Epidemic and Its Impact on Westford,” takes place Wednesday, Sept. 27, 7:30 – 9 p.m., at the Millennium School Meeting Room, 23 Depot St., Westford.
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