On June 4, a 27-year-old Lompoc man was found dead inside his home; that same day, a 32-year-old man was found dead inside a Solvang hotel room; and three days later, a 31-year-old Solvang woman was found dead in her home.
Following investigations into all three deaths, officials from the Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Office said in a press release that information gathered from the scenes indicated that each person may have died from overdoses of heroin. Pending the outcomes of toxicology reports, investigators aren’t saying that heroin was the cause of death and police aren’t releasing names.
The county has experienced strings of similar apparent overdoses in the past. In 2010, The Santa Barbara Independent reported on what was presumed to be five heroin overdoses in a period of three days. The recent spate of deaths in a short period of time indicates a trend across the United States—Santa Barbara County included—that heroin use is on the rise, according to both federal and local officials.
The county alone saw a 30 percent jump in heroin and prescription painkiller abuse in the last five years, according to John Doyel, program manager for the alcohol and drug program in Santa Barbara County Alcohol, Drug, and Mental Health Services (ADMHS), which is the county agency that helps citizens recover from drug addictions.
“It’s widespread,” Doyel said. “It’s a national problem. It’s a local problem. Currently, we have more of what we call heroin and prescription painkiller incidents. We have more of that in South County than in North County, but it’s everywhere.”
Of the approximately 4,500 patients seeking drug treatment through ADMHS, heroin accounts for 27 percent of the addictions, Doyel said. That’s a conservative figure, he added, and it doesn’t even cover the people who aren’t seeking treatment.
Doyel said it’s the heroin rush that attracts users, adding that the drug is very destructive to the human body. According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, once heroin is ingested, it’s converted into morphine and binds to opioid receptors in the brain, many of which lie in the brain stem—the part of the brain that controls breathing and respiration.
Too much at once and the user risks hypoxia, or when the body is deprived of oxygen, according to the Institute. Long-term use can lead to physical dependence, where the user needs more and more to achieve the same high. Doyel describes it as a dulling of the receptors.
“Imagine a hammer and you’re starting to bend the nail and it doesn’t go through the wood anymore,” Doyel said. “It dulls the receptors. They kind of get worn out.”
According to a Drug Enforcement Agency National Heroin Threat Assessment Summary released in April 2015, the number of heroin users in the U.S. increased by 172 percent between the years of 2010 and 2013.
The Midwestern and Northeastern regions of the U.S. experienced the greatest surge in heroin deaths, according to a report issued this year by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The CDC reported that heroin-related deaths jumped by 11 and four times in each region, respectively, between 2000 and 2013.
Out West, more people are also dying from heroin use. In the same span of time, heroin deaths increased three times in the Western region, according to the CDC.
And it’s no longer confined to minority users in the cities, according to Vijay Rathi, a special agent and public information officer for the Drug Enforcement Agency’s Los Angeles Division. Back in the 1970s and ’80s, heroin was mostly used in urban population, Rathi said, but that’s changed.
“There is no longer a standard type of heroin user,” Rathi said, adding that the spread of heroin followed the prescription drug epidemic.
Why did it follow? There are many reasons, but a lot of it has to do with people who were addicted to prescription painkillers and switched to heroin as those prescribed meds became increasingly unavailable, according to Rathi.
The over-prescription of painkillers by doctors led to droves of people getting addicted to things like oxycodone, he said. Then came years of crackdowns, stings of pain management clinics and illegal dealers by the authorities in an attempt to stop the epidemic.
Rathi said that in 2010, pharmaceutical companies changed the formula of prescription painkillers, such as OxyContin, to a non-crushable form, which made it harder to abuse, increasing the price while decreasing the availability.
“People were still addicted opioids, and they’re still expensive,” Rathi said. “What do you do? You’re hooked. They don’t have the pills anymore, so they’re resorting to heroin.”
To make matters worse, Rathi said, Mexican drug cartels are recognizing this and pumping an ever-increasing supply of cheap, black tar heroin into California, which is the most common type on the West Coast. Rathi said its purity has increased and can be bought for as little as $5 per gram.
And it’s no longer only injected. It can be smoked and even snorted, Rathi said, adding that the snortable form is becoming more common.
The scariest part, Rathi said, is that the cartels are adding another extremely potent narcotic to the mix—fentanyl—and it can often lead to deadly results. Fentanyl is a synthetic drug similar to heroin, but more powerful than morphine and commonly used to treat patients who are physically tolerant to opiates, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse. Rathi said an amount of fentanyl equal to a few grains of salt can cause respiratory failure and death.
Erowid, an organization that disseminates information on psychoactive plants and chemicals, lists fetanyl as going by street names such as “China White,” “Sublimaze,” or “Lollipop.” It’s often sold as heroin on the street and is known to cause deaths, according to the website, erowid.org.
“It’s just really, really dangerous stuff,” Rathi said.
To disrupt the flow of heroin and other drugs into the U.S., the DEA forms task forces with local agencies. The DEA deputizes police officers for a period of three to five years with the goal of penetrating local drug markets. Currently, Rathi said the DEA has a field office in Ventura County that works with deputies from Santa Barbara County.
“It’s a force multiplier,” Rathi said. “One of our greatest strengths is we have extremely strong relationships with our local partners.”
But it’s not just about enforcement. Education and treatment play just as equal roles in countering the heroin threat, Rathi said.
Doyel with Santa Barbara County ADMHS said the most effective way to fight heroin addiction is with another opiate, methadone. It’s controversial because it can still leave a person dependent on it for life, although that’s not necessarily the case, he added.
“It’s controversial but it’s probably the most efficacious treatment,” Doyel said.
Although methadone itself is an opiate narcotic, it takes the cravings away from heroin and has a longer duration, Doyel said.
Besides methadone, Doyel said the ADMHS is trying to acquire alternative addiction medications, such as naltrexone—overdose reversal medication—and suboxone, another opiate.
The ADMHS also provides drug-free outpatient counseling services. Doyel added that social reinforcement can often help wean people off addictive substances.
Contact Staff Writer David Minsky at dminsky@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Jun 18-25, 2015.