With the highest fatal opioid overdose rates in Santa Barbara County, Lompoc city officials installed opioid rescue kits throughout public facilities to potentially help save lives, Mayor Jenelle Osborne said.
“Deaths were slightly higher than the rest of the county; that’s a sign to me that we have an issue and we’re not talking about something that’s happening [somewhere] else,” Osborne said. “It really is about what our preventative tools are, and it starts with preventing overdose deaths and educating people on what that looks like.”
The opioid rescue kits have been placed at Lompoc City Hall, the Lompoc Public Library, the Village Library, the Dick DeWees Community and Senior Center, the Anderson Recreation Center, the Lompoc Aquatic Center, and the Lompoc Landfill.
Each kit contains two doses of Narcan—a life-saving medication that reverses an opiod overdose’s effects—a set of instructions, a set of gloves, and CPR assistance equipment, she said. The Lompoc Fire Department will restock kits if they are used and they helped train staff at each site in Narcan’s administration—including Osborne.
“Staff in each location have been trained so we are prepared. I will say it is unfortunate, but as we finished our training Fire Department personnel were loading the engine because they got a call that was unfortunately an overdose,” she said.
The Lompoc Fire Department has used Narcan on patients at least 50 times so far this calendar year, Osborne added.
According to a 2021 county needs assessment, Lompoc has the highest overdose death rate in the region at approximately 63 individuals per 100,000 following Santa Barbara city’s 41.7 per 100,000. In the 12-month period ending December 2021, 28 people overdosed and died in Lompoc. As a result, Lompoc joined Santa Barbara County Sheriff Bill Brown’s Project Opioid to meet with local officials, educators, and nonprofits on a monthly basis in order to create new partnerships and find ways to manage the crisis.
“It was really important for us to be at the table to understand all of the moving parts and advocate for the support we needed to combat it,” Osborne said.
At the most recent Project Opioid meeting in May, Osborne said that there was some good news: Based on the county’s proactivity with education programs and Narcan distribution, the Sheriff’s Office is seeing a path toward reducing the number of overdose deaths.
“Because we are presenting so many opportunities to get Narcan into the hands of the public, to [people who use drugs], and in public for free, we are seeing less deaths,” Osborne said. “It’s not necessarily seeing the overdoses decrease, but we are seeing the deaths decrease. I know that doesn’t always seem like a win, but it is when you reduce a loss of life.”
Sheriff’s Lt. Jarrett Morris told the Sun that the Sheriff’s Office originally projected roughly 192 overdose deaths, with 162 related to fentanyl for 2023. As of June 6, those estimates decreased to about 144 total overdoses, with 96 related to fentanyl.
“We’re looking at what we’ve had for the year, what we had each month and drew equations finding that out. It’s not super official, but it gives Project Opioid an idea of where we are sitting,” he said.
Education campaigns, partnerships and new projects, and Narcan’s increased availability were discussed as potential reasons for the projected decrease, Morris said, but he stressed that it’s still early in the year, several cases are still pending toxicology, and these numbers don’t solidify low overdose death rates for the year.
“This past week we had five overdose deaths and four of them were likely fentanyl related. That’s a really big week for us in the county, so if we see those trends continue, we could go into some of those numbers we were seeing earlier this year,” he said on June 6.
To continue its efforts against the opioid crisis, the Sheriff’s Office started distributing free doses of Narcan at all of its stations in March—no questions asked—Morris said. Since the beginning of the program, the Sheriff’s Office has distributed 1,278 doses of Narcan.
“We don’t know if our Narcan has saved any lives; I assume that it has and we are getting it into the hands of people—which could play a role in this potential decreased number,” he said. “All of us working together under the umbrella of Project Opioid makes a difference, and we are doing it one saved life at a time.”
Pacific Pride Foundation, the Santa Barbara Opioid Safety Coalition, UC Santa Barbara Student Health Services Alcohol and Drug Program, and Santa Barbara County Behavioral Wellness’s Fentanyl is Forever program also have Narcan distribution programs. Visit opioidsafetysb.org or the organizations’ websites to learn more.
This article appears in Jun 8-18, 2023.