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Jan. 4, 2024 – The alarm is being sounded by experts regarding the combination of prescription and/or recreational drugs that now contribute to nearly three-quarters of overdose deaths in the United States.
Experts said during a webinar sponsored by the National Institute for Health Care Management that the use of fentanyl along with the animal tranquilizer xylazine makes preventing substance use disorder and associated overdose deaths even more complicated.
“Nearly 74% of all overdose deaths linked to cocaine now involve synthetic opioids, such as fentanyl,” said Cecelia Spitznas, PhD, a senior science policy analyst in the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy. “This type of combination drug use is part of a new trend driving the overdose rate, along with a growing use of xylazine, or ‘tranq.’”
The drug combinations were declared an emerging threat against the United States in April by the White House.
Shawn Westfahl, overdose prevention and harm reduction coordinator at Prevention Point Philadelphia, said during the webinar, “if you yourself use any substance or if you know anybody who uses substances, here’s a couple of things that we like to encourage people to think about.” Avoid using drugs alone, since “most people who die from opioid overdose die with nobody around them. We encourage people to use the buddy system and stagger their use.’
Westfahl also suggests that people using substances “go slow, go easy, especially if they inject. They can put more in; they can’t take it out. And we encourage people to avoid mixing in other drugs with opioids.”
Although equal access is a challenge, “the most important thing that we in the United States can do at this point in time to combat the substance use disorders epidemic, and that’s increasing access to evidence-based treatment, in particular … to medically assisted treatment,” said Doug Henry, PhD, vice president of psychiatry and behavioral health at Allegheny Health Network in Pittsburgh.
Henry agreed that drug combinations are adding to the challenge.
“The ongoing opioid epidemic and the emerging epidemic of combined molecules into deadly poisons are leading to an increased frequency of overdoses,” he said. He is seeing spikes in both of his professional roles – at Allegheny Health, a 14-hospital network in southwestern Pennsylvania and western New York, and at Highmark Health, the third largest Blue Cross Blue Shield insurance company in the United States, serving members primarily in West Virginia.