Boulder County has not been immune to the national increase in opioid abuse and addiction.
On average, 30 Boulder County residents die each year of accidental opioid overdose. Prescription drug overdose death rates are highest in Longmont, while heroin overdose death rates are highest in southeast Boulder County, which includes Lafayette, Louisville and Superior.
“We’re hearing of a lot of people taking a shift from prescription drugs to heroin,” said Jamie Feld, an epidemiologist with Boulder County Public Health.
Boulder County Public Health has responded to the problem in several ways, both preventive and life-saving. On the preventive side, the county added six drop off spots for household medication in January 2017 to decrease the opportunity for teens to experiment with leftover prescription opioids in their parents’ medicine cabinets.
The county has also made available Naloxone, which reverses overdoses and has offered training sessions in how to administer it. Since February 2017, 42 Naloxone kits have been distributed to the public, and law enforcement has received 375 kits. Since 1916, the county has tallied 48 reports of clients administering Naloxone.
The number of unique clients in Boulder County’s needle exchange program, called Works, has skyrocketed, serving 1,335 in 2016. That’s nearly nine times the number the program served in 2010. This eye-popping increase is even greater when you consider that each person served provides supplies for 2.5 people on average.
Feld noted one particularly disturbing contributor to this trend.
“There’s a misperception that injecting (drugs) is safer,” she said. “Users think, ‘They do it in the hospital. It’s not doing harm to the nose.’”
The Works program is working with clients to prevent them from initiating others into the practice, said Carol Helwig, program coordinator. She added that many users ritualize injecting the drug. She has known of addicts who get sober, but inject water, because they were addicted to the ritual, as well as the drug.
“If you’re snorting, stick to snorting,” she said.
