The overdose death rate remained unchanged during 2016 at 24.8 deaths per 1,000 residents, considering slight statewide population growth, the state Department of Health announced Wednesday. The rate of unintentional fatal drug overdoses — those not linked to suicides — showed a slight increase. Nearly three in four overdose deaths statewide involved opioids of some kind, including prescription pain medication and heroin. State Epidemiologist Michael Landen said the plateau in the fatal overdose rate is unsatisfactory but runs counter to a worsening national trend. “This is much more favorable than having continued substantial increases in rates, which is what we’re seeing from around the country,” Landen said. “But that’s not satisfactory. We want our rates to drop and continue dropping.” Overdose deaths in New Mexico have hovered well above the national average, even as the state has implemented pioneering policies to rein in fatalities. The state was the first in 2001 to increase access to the overdose-reversal drug naloxone, and a few years later, it led the way in releasing people from legal liability when they assist in overdose situations. This year, New Mexico became the first U.S. state to require all local and state law enforcement agencies to provide officers with antidote kits in an effort to curb deaths from opioid overdoses. State health officials are holding out hope that documented decreases in opioid prescriptions in early 2017 will help limit addiction and overdose deaths. New Mexico strengthened its prescription monitoring program in response to a surge in its drug overdose death rate in 2014, when the state ranked second only to West Virginia. In 2015, seven states had higher overdoes death rates. Full state-by-state comparisons for 2016 won’t be released until later in the year by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Health Department Secretary Lynn Gallagher cited a decrease in early 2017 in the amount of prescribed opioids and fewer dangerous overlapping prescriptions for individual patients as encouraging developments, while lamenting the continued loss of life from overdoses. “There’s a lot more work to be done,” she said in a statement. Unintentional overdose deaths in New Mexico increased to 428 in 2016 from 410 in 2015. Drug overdoses are the leading cause of death from injury in New Mexico and nationally, exceeding traffic related deaths. Emily Kaltenbach, state director for the Drug Policy Alliance, said stubbornly high fatalities should prompt new questions about state spending and tactics. Landen said recently approved funding from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is helping New Mexico study the effectiveness of efforts to stem overdose deaths — “to tease out what policy interventions are more effective and which ones may be less useful.” Republican New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez counts drug overdose prevention as a major priority, including efforts to increase access to medications such as buprenorphine and methadone used to wean addicts off opioid pills or heroin. At the same time, a federal review is underway into the level of access that New Mexico residents have to behavior health services, which include drug-dependency treatment, under Medicaid. The state’s behavior health system was upended in 2013 when Martinez’s administration froze payments to more than a dozen nonprofits based on concerns about possible fraud. An investigation by the New Mexico Attorney General’s Office eventually found only regulatory violations and no patterns of fraud.
Drug overdose deaths up slightly in New Mexico.