Bartholomew County could be on pace to see an increase in overdose deaths this year.
As of Monday, there had been a total of 17 confirmed or suspected overdose deaths in the county, up from 12 at the same point last year, according to the Bartholomew County Coroner’s Office.
If all the suspected deaths are confirmed, that would put the county on pace for roughly 30 overdose deaths this year, which would be an increase from 22 deaths last year and the highest annual total since 2022, when the county saw a record 39 deaths.
The Bartholomew County Coroner’s Office said fentanyl and methamphetamine are the two most common substances that have appeared on toxicology tests so far this year, though officials have said in the past that most overdose deaths involve multiple substances.
Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid that is more potent than heroin but is cheaper to produce and distribute. Officials say fentanyl is increasingly being cut with other drugs, including counterfeit pills.
“To be honest, it’s anyone’s guess what causes the numbers to surge and dip,” said Bartholomew County Deputy Coroner Jay Frederick. “I actually think it’s reflective of the randomness of dangerous drug use. It’s like a lot of people playing Russian Roulette.”
The updated figures from the coroner come after Bartholomew County saw declines in overdose deaths the previous two years after surging to records highs in 2020, 2021 and 2022.
The decline in overdose deaths the past two years had “pleasantly surprised” some local officials at drug treatment facilities who were skeptical that drug use in Bartholomew County had declined or that the illicit drug supply had gotten any safer.
Officials at Columbus Regional Health’s Treatment and Support Center (TASC) — which provides a range of outpatient treatments for substance use disorder — said previously that some patients believe they were taking oxycodone or Percocet only to find out through a urine screening that they were unknowingly taking fentanyl.
Other local officials had said they were cautiously optimistic and hopeful that a combination of factors — including all of the local efforts and programming, the wider availability of overdose-reversing drug naloxone and high-profile arrests and convictions of drug dealers — may have been playing a role in the decline the previous two years.
For its part, the Alliance for Substance Abuse Progress (ASAP) said it is monitoring the data.
“The ASAP team monitors that information and recognizes a possible spike in the data,” said Executive Director Megan Cherry, who took over the top leadership role at ASAP on July 7.
The update from local officials comes a couple months after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that there were 30,000 fewer U.S. drug overdose deaths in 2024 than the year before — the largest one-year decline ever recorded, The Associated Press reported.
An estimated 80,000 people died from overdoses last year, according to provisional CDC data released in May. That’s down 27% from the 110,000 in 2023.
The CDC has been collecting comparable data for 45 years. The previous largest one-year drop was 4% in 2018, according to the agency’s National Center for Health Statistics.
All but two states, including Indiana, saw declines last year, with Nevada and South Dakota experiencing small increases. Some of the biggest drops were in Ohio, West Virginia and other states that have been hard-hit in the nation’s decades-long overdose epidemic.
Experts say more research needs to be done to understand what drove the reduction, but they mention several possible factors, according to wire reports.
Among the most cited include the increased availability of naloxone, expanded addiction treatment, shifts in how people use drugs, the growing impact of billions of dollars in opioid lawsuit settlement money and the number of at-risk Americans is shrinking, after waves of deaths in older adults and a shift in teens and younger adults away from the drugs that cause most deaths.
There were 1,542 overdose deaths in Indiana last year, down about 31% from 2,221 deaths in 2023, according to the Indiana Department of Health.
By comparison, overdose deaths in Bartholomew County declined by around 36% in 2023 and 12% in 2024, according to records with the Bartholomew County Coroner’s Office.
