Over 300 dead in another record year for overdose deaths as city leaders grapple with solutions | Crime/Police

Following another year of skyrocketing overdose deaths, Baton Rouge city and community leaders are doubling down on efforts to prosecute high-trafficking drug dealers and ease treatment access for people struggling with addiction. 

“There’s a lot of bodies that are washing up on the shore,” said Tonja Myles, a substance abuse counselor and local advocate. “We need to go to where they’re jumping in to stop them from getting to that point.”

More than 300 people died of overdoses in the parish in 2021, according to East Baton Rouge Parish Coroner Dr. William “Beau” Clark. With toxicology results still pending for many of the year-end cases, Clark said the total is approaching 350.

Those numbers are a dramatic increase from the 242 overdose deaths in 2020, which was a record-setting year for fatal overdoses.

Clark, as the coroner, has watched in real time as the opioid epidemic has tightened its grip on the parish — first as people began to turn to heroin when their prescription pain pills ran out, and then as the potent synthetic opioid fentanyl crept onto the scene.

Now, fentanyl has all but flooded the market and is almost solely responsible for the number of fatal overdoses in the past year, he said. Fentanyl has even tainted other kinds of drugs. 

“People that normally aren’t opioid abusers — they’ve used cocaine, methamphetamine and even recreational marijuana — are now getting those drugs laced with illicit fentanyl and have died from fentanyl,” Clark said.

BRPD Chief Murphy Paul, who convened a group of local substance abuse experts and criminal justice leaders Thursday morning to discuss the crisis, characterized the overdose deaths as a “community issue” that extends beyond law enforcement involvement. 

He highlighted two initiatives in an effort to offer the public concrete options for addressing addiction in their families and neighborhoods.

The “When You Are Ready” campaign that has been active for more than a year presents a two-pronged mission: steer people struggling with addiction into treatment programs when they have made the choice to do so, and educate those who have the most contact with people using drugs, such as law enforcement and faith-based groups. 

Paul also touted an effort established by a newly formed recovery coalition called “One call. Save many,” that urges people to report drug dealers distributing fentanyl to Crime Stoppers. 

“Those people who are selling that crap and that poison, and you know you’re doing it, then you need to be held accountable,” Myles said.

Others, such as Janzlean Laughinghouse, executive director of Capital Area Human Services, emphasized ongoing efforts to treat addiction using research-proven methods and partnerships amid the epidemic. The coronavirus pandemic merely exacerbated the overdose deaths already trending upward prior to 2020, she said. 

“We were in dire straits before, and now we are now dealing with the wreckage,” she said. “People who didn’t have problems before have them now; people who had problems before now have them exponentially worse.”

As Laughinghouse and others have repeatedly emphasized, substance abuse is a brain disease that can only be cured through treatment.

This is not a belief that has always been widely held.

Cheryl Wyatt, who acts as Recovery Court director for the 19th Judicial District Court, noted that certain treatment options were not used in their program until recently because they were not understood. Recovery court offers treatment services to people using substances who wind up in the criminal justice system.

“Probably up until three years ago, MAT (medically assisted treatment) was not permitted because it was seen at that time as one drug replacing another drug,” she said. “So we’ve educated ourselves that this is a disease.”

Medically assisted treatment involves using less addictive drugs like Suboxone or methadone to wean people off opioids, combined with counseling and behavioral therapies. Additionally, the court works to educate loved ones on signs of substance misuse so they can prevent relapses or overdoses.

“Just locking them up?” Wyatt said. “That’s not working anymore.”

When people using drugs are not necessarily ready to begin treatment, some advocate for harm reduction instead. Gjvar Payne, executive director of the Capitol Area Reentry Program, works to get people clean syringes, wound care kits and Narcan — the lifesaving drug that reverses opioid overdoses.

Toward the end of Thursday’s meeting, Chief Paul reminded attendees there is a great deal of trauma in the Baton Rouge community, and that this fuels addiction.

Jon Daily, who works for the district attorney’s office, added that marijuana and alcohol are not what tend to lead to dangerous substance use — more often than not, it’s trauma. That, he said, is the true “gateway drug.”