Such drug poisoning deaths have reached epidemic proportions in Ohio, vaulting unintentional drug poisoning to the leading cause of injury death in 2007, according to the Ohio Department of Health.
Nowhere in the state, though, is this silent killer more prevalent than in Montgomery County, where an average of nearly 24 people per 100,000 residents died from accidental overdoses each year from 2004 to 2008. Most of the state’s other urban counties — Lucas, Hamilton, Cuyahoga and Summit — have rates that are less than half that of Montgomery County.
The disparity has most local and state experts scratching their heads. Some cite the region’s struggling economy, demographics, widespread availability of illegal and prescription drugs and the lack of appropriate treatment options. Others wonder if there is under-reporting elsewhere.
“We don’t understand enough about the people who are dying,” said Robert Carlson, director of Wright State University’s Center for Interventions, Treatment & Addictions Research. “It’s a real black box at this point.”
For Ben Leeson of Miami Twp., whose daughter, Kim Shoup, died of an accidental overdose in 2001, it’s a pain that won’t go away.
“We’ve never gotten over it,” Leeson said. “It just really hit our family real hard.”
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