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Addiction Expert Discusses Statewide Surge In Heroin Overdoses

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State Police are trying to understand a surge of heroin and opioid overdoses. Authorities tell the Boston Globe that 114 people died of suspected opioid overdoses last month across the state — double the number in November.

That number also doesn't include the state's three biggest cities: Boston, Worcester and Springfield.

Dr. Daniel Alford, who oversees the clinical addiction research and education unit at Boston Medical Center, joins Morning Edition to discuss this statewide rise in suspected heroin deaths.

To hear the full interview, click on the audio player above.


Interview Highlights:

On why the heroin is so deadly:

DA: "I think we're learning a lot from our patients who are seeking addiction treatment. They certainly have talked about a difference in appearance of the heroin that they're seeing — there seem to be more crystals. It's being cut with something, and whether it's fentanyl or, some people have talked about methamphetamine, it seems that it's being cut with things that are potentially very lethal."

"I saw a patient just the other day who talked about the heroin now causing them to pass out within minutes of taking it, so they're very nervous about using dealers that they've never dealt with before. And it's really an opportunity to start talking to patients about overdose risk and making sure they have Narcan available and that they are not using alone."

On whether restrictions on prescriptions are causing people to turn to heroin:

DA: "As you make one drug less available there is a tendency to start using other drugs, and heroin is certainly readily available, cheap and quite pure."

On how doctors aim to scale back on issuing pain prescriptions:

DA: "As we start to decrease the amount of prescribing that's being done, we clearly don't want to decrease access to these medications to those who benefit from them because of their chronic pain, but clearly we need to be more careful and safer and there is a lot of educational programs that are ongoing to train prescribers how to prescribe these more safely."

This article was originally published on January 29, 2015.

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Bob Oakes was a senior correspondent in the WBUR newsroom, a role he took on in 2021 after nearly three decades hosting WBUR's Morning Edition.

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