Number of drug overdose deaths in Ohio rising

A survey of Ohio county coroners has found more than 4,000 people died from drug overdoses last year in a state among the hardest hit by a heroin and opioid epidemic. The Columbus Dispatch reported Sunday that the state’s 4,149 unintentional fatal overdoses in 2016 are a 36 percent increase from the previous year when just over 3,000 deaths were reported. Citing an analysis by the Kaiser Family Foundation that used statistics from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the newspaper said Ohio led the nation in the total number of fatal overdoses in 2014 and 2015. The state Department of Mental Health & Addiction Services said Ohio’s 2015 fatal overdose numbers could have been much higher were it not for lives saved with the opioid overdose antidote, naloxone.