See Where LI Counties Stand On Opioid, Fentanyl Deaths: Report

LONG ISLAND, NY — While Nassau County has one of the lowest rates of opioid and other drug overdose deaths in New York State, Suffolk County's rate was almost twice as high, according to a tracker based on federal health data.

Thursday was International Overdose Awareness Day, and across Long Island, those mourning lives lost to the scourge of addiction came together to remember and galvanize for change.

A study published in The Lancet last year found the North American opioid crisis was driven by insufficient regulation of the pharmaceutical and health care industries, enabling a “profit-driven quadrupling of opioid prescribing” for a broad range of chronic, non-cancer pain conditions.

As a result, hundreds of thousands of people have fatally overdosed on prescription opioids and millions more became addicted, the researchers said. Heroin markets became saturated with synthetics, including the more deadly and cheaper fentanyl.

There were six times more drug overdose deaths in 2021 than in 1999, according to U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data. More than 75 percent of the nearly 107,000 drug overdose deaths in 2021 involved an opioid or synthetic opioid. Since 1999, more than a million people nationwide have died of drug overdoses, according to CDC data.

A data visualization by the San Francisco Chronicle shows overdose deaths per 100,000 residents and the share of deaths that involve fentanyl and other synthetic opioids.

In New York State, the counties with the most overdoses in 2022 were Bronx, Sullivan, Broome, Chemung and Monroe. The five counties with the least were Nassau, Westchester, Saratoga, Ontario and Rockland.

Drug overdoses were higher per 100,000 residents in Suffolk County than in Nassau County, according to the Chronicle.

In Nassau County the drug overdose death rate was 17.1 people per 100,000 residents in 2022. That’s up from a rate of 12.3 per 100,000 — 49 percent of which were fentanyl-related in 2018. In 2022 the fentanyl share skyrocketed to 77 percent, according to the study.

In Suffolk County, the drug overdose rate was 33.4 people per 100,000 residents in 2022, up from 25.0 in 2018. In 2022, 78 percent were fentanyl-related, up from 65 percent in 2018.

On Long Island, the fentanyl crisis has let to Narcan stations in bars, restaurants and schools, in what some have called a "race against time."

A cloak of mourning hung heavy over Greenport in 2021 after a batch of fentanyl-laced cocaine led to eight overdoses and six deaths over eight days on the North Fork and Shelter Island.

Dr. Jeffrey Reynolds, president and chief executive officer of the Family and Children's Association in Mineola, spoke with Patch about the fentanyl crisis earlier in 2023.

"We’ve been telling folks who use a drug to assume that there’s fentanyl in most street drugs — because there is," Reynolds said.

The biggest challenge right now is counterfeit pills designed to resemble Xanax and ADHD medications, he added.

"The proliferation of anxiety and depression among young people post-COVID, a shortage of mental health programs and supply chain issues with ADHD meds, have propelled folks to street-level dealers peddling counterfeit pills that are often contaminated with fentanyl," Reynolds said. "We call those ‘poisonings’ rather than ‘overdoses’ because these aren’t victims who used too much of a drug, but rather people who consumed one drug that was actually another that is far more powerful and deadly. If someone puts cyanide in my breakfast cereal, I didn’t overdose on cereal."

He added: "The fix? All the things we should have figured out 15 years ago when heroin once again reared its head."

Those solutions, Reynolds said, include evidence-based prevention, harm reduction strategies, including the distribution of fentanyl tests strips and Naloxone, access to treatment on demand and better support for people in recovery.

Despite the grim reality, Reynolds pointed to rays of hope: Suffolk County recently distributed opioid settlement dollars and New York has done the same.

"It’s an exciting time, but it also feels like a race against time as the body count continues to rise and more families face the horror of losing a loved one to a preventable condition," he said.

To read the entire study, click here.