Heroin overdoses could kill 24 Boone County residents this year if the present trend continues.
“We’re at eight overdose deaths already this year,” Boone County Coroner Shon Hough told the Boone County Council Tuesday, in a conversation that began with his request to approve a one-day course in drug crime investigation. “We’re on pace to get about 24.”
It is possible, though, that overdoses have killed between 16 and 18 county residents this year, Hough said. Persons who die of overdoses after being taken to hospitals outside Boone are not included in the county's death information, he explained.
In 2015 there were 420 deaths, from all causes, in Boone County, county health department administrator Cindy Murphy, RN, said.
An effort is being made at the state level to get the address of origin of an emergency call, to track overdose deaths across county lines, Hough said.
“Those are deaths,” he said. “Those don’t have anything to do with calls for service for an overdose, or a difficulty breathing that turns into an overdose,” Hough said. He was referring to calls made to the Boone County Dispatch Center at the jail that reported medical incidents. “These are all things that have to be worked out through the state.”
County residents are going to Indianapolis to buy heroin, Boone County Sheriff Mike Nielsen told the council.
“They are going down there, shooting up and driving, or being driven, back,” he said
The Hamilton/Boone Drug Task Force and the FBI have both told Nielsen it is common to see license plates from both counties on vehicles being driven to drug buys in Marion County, where courts tend to be more lenient on drug crimes, he said.
“How do you fight users going to Indianapolis?” Council President Steve Jacob asked Nielsen.
“You’ll find out in September,” when county agencies present their budgets to the county council for review and approval, Nielsen said. That is when he will present a plan to will create an interdiction task force that will target the drug epidemic.
“Dope and money” are constantly being transferred between Indianapolis and Chicago along Interstate 65, Nielsen said.
“We have to be proactive, and we are being reactive right now,” he said. “It’s an epidemic, and we have to get to higher ground. If we don’t, we are going to pay for it, like Scott County is paying for it.”
Councilman Kevin VanHorn asked if police are tracking drug dealers. “Can you keep an eye on them?” he asked.
“We do what we are allowed,” Nielsen said. “If we can stop 30 grams of heroin coming into the county from Indianapolis, that’s what we need to do.”
Heroin seized here has been found laced with fentanyl, Nielsen said. An extremely powerful synthetic opioid originally developed for anesthesia and to treat severe chronic pain, fentanyl was introduced in the 1960s as an intravenous anesthetic, the Drug Enforcement Administration said. Fentanyl is 100 times more powerful than morphine and has a high risk for abuse, in part because it can be used as a direct substitute for heroin, the DEA said.