app.com: Opioids poured into South Jersey in 2010 and 2015

7/10/2017

Emergency department visits alone rose 100 percent between 2005 and 2014 Ken Serrano

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The number of opioid prescriptions written in the southern counties of New Jersey were among the nation's highest in 2015, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Six of New Jersey's 21 counties — Atlantic, Burlington, Camden, Cape May, Cumberland and Gloucester — ranked in the top 30 percent for opioid prescription amounts nationally.

Why were New Jersey's southern counties so high?

The CDC listed some characteristics of high-prescription counties. They included small cities or large towns; places with a higher percentage of white residents; counties with more dentists and primary care physicians; places with a higher percentage of uninsured or unemployed people; and places with higher rates of diabetes, arthritis or disability.

But the differences frequently defy explanation.

"Opioid prescribing varies as much from place to place as the weather," said Dr. Anne Schuchat, the CDC’s acting director. Schuchat added that even neighboring counties can show huge differences.

Regardless of the reasons, the results have been devastating.

The United States is experiencing the highest drug overdose death rates ever recorded, driven by prescription opioids and by heroin and illicitly manufactured fentanyl, Schuchat said.

There was some good news in the report: Data issued by the CDC show that New Jersey's overall prescriptions – in terms of amounts — dipped about 3 percent from 2010, the peak year of prescriptions nationally, to 2015.

 
 
 
 

A measure to limit opioid prescriptions is up for a vote in the state Senate and Assembly. This is why legislators feel the law is needed. Wochit

But even though the number of prescriptions decreased in 2015, the number issued in New Jersey was well above the national average. That's because the national prescription amounts fell more. Nationally, they declined by 18 percent from 2010 to 2015, according to the CDC.

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That drop is numerically small in comparison to the sharp, 11-year rise before it. Opioid prescription amounts in the United States quadrupled from 180 morphine milligram equivalents (MME) in 1999 to 782 MME in 2010.

Despite the recent decline in prescriptions issued, the CDC stressed the numbers are not low enough.

In 2015, every American could have been placed on opioids for three full weeks if the amount of prescriptions were averaged out. Taking even a low dose of opioids for more than three months increases the risk of addiction by 15 times, according to the CDC.

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In 2015, the highest-prescription New Jersey county was Camden, which ranked 517thout of 3,143 counties nationwide.

On the low end of the rankings were Hudson and Somerset counties, which  stood at 2,472 and 2003 among counties in 2015, respectively.

Monmouth ranked in the middle of all counties, at 1,480 in 2015.

Ocean County ranked near the top-third in 2015.

“I was shocked at first when I saw the numbers,” said Joseph Coronato, Ocean County prosecutor. “But we’re going in the right direction.”

Prescription amounts in the county fell by 18 percent between 2010 and 2015.

Coronato’s office has worked on several tracks to lower the death rate from opioid overdoses in the county, including working with health care providers to stress the need to lower prescriptions.

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The CDC has pinned the stunning rise in heroin and other opioid overdose deaths to a sharp increase in painkiller prescriptions. The National Institute on Drug Abuse has said the biggest way to curtail the epidemic is to limit opioid prescriptions.

Martinsville City, Virginia., an independent city with no county affiliation, had the highest prescription amounts in both 2010 and 2015, 5,201 MME and 4,087, respectively.

COUNTY

2010

2015

ATLANTIC

896.18

971.23

BERGEN

574.44

470.96

BURLINGTON

1007.60

1071.54

CAMDEN

1352.85

1230.79

CAPE MAY

1098.56

1220.54

CUMBERLAND

907.64

1066.66

ESSEX

482.11

407.14

GLOUCESTER

1143.75

1198.02

HUDSON

437.80

371.54

HUNTERDON

458.10

455.88

MERCER

615.55

624.97

MIDDLESEX

800.13

552.53

MONMOUTH

890.34

703.85

MORRIS

550.62

468.24

OCEAN

1095.45

898.87

PASSAIC

577.65

575.33

SALEM

921.15

951.11

SOMERSET

440.62

399.53

SUSSEX

679.85

793.17

UNION

488.77

420.81

WARREN

747.61

795.34

NJ AVERAGE

769.85

745.14

NATIONAL

782.00

640.00