If you live in Nevada, chances are good you know someone who’s been affected by drug overdose.
According to a recently released CDC report, our state had the second-largest rate increase in the number of deaths due to drug overdose from June 2023 to June 2024, compared to the previous year.
The number of individuals succumbing to drugs rose from 1,271 to 1,603 — a 26% increase. That number in 2019? Just over 500 people.
Remarkably, though drug overdose is now the leading cause of death of people below the age of 50, most other U.S. states saw slowdowns in their overdose fatalities. In fact, the average was down 14% from June 2023 to June 2024.
Experts like Ariann Chelli, who works as the clinical director at Desert Hope Treatment Center, chalk this disparity in state and national statistics up to a combination of forces.
“[In Nevada] we have a really difficult time getting people from the ER, when they do experience an overdose, to treatment services,” she said. “Another issue that we have is when [patients] are discharged from the hospital and they are given a prescription for Narcan or Naloxone [both drugs used to reverse opiate overdose], they will not get it filled. Less than 20% [do].”
But the increase in fentanyl in the local drug supply, as a cheap cutting agent in more desirable drugs, is likely another contributor to accidental overdoses.
“We used to have people who were doing stimulant drugs, and it was very rare to have an overdose happen,” said Chelli. “For somebody who did methamphetamines, there would be other consequences, but an overdose would be very rare. [But now] you see somebody who is using methamphetamines, and their overdose rate is also rising because fentanyl is essentially poisoning those substances.”
Dr. David Hart, an emergency medicine physician at MountainView Hospital, said ERs around the valley are experiencing an uptick in overdose victims.
“When I trained over 10 years ago, it was not that uncommon to see somebody with an opioid overdose in the emergency department,” he said. “But now we're dealing with it almost on a daily basis. … [At Sunrise Hospital] they see 25% of all of the opioid related visits for the whole state.”
Altogether, this bleak landscape was what inspired Hart, Sunrise Hospital emergency medicine physician Suzanne Roozendaal, and local bar manager Mathew “Buck” Buckosh to pilot a program that gets Narcan into the hands of bartenders — who have the potential to intervene in overdoses.
On an academic level, once approved, it will also provide crucial community-level information about how many people are actually overdosing in bars and nightclubs. This data, said Hart, can go towards educating future public health professionals.
“I'm a program director for an emergency medicine residency, and Dr. Roozendaal and I run that together. And so this is part of what we have to do anyway, which is research. And this furthers us as a program. … And then it has the added benefit of helping us know how we as a community can address this issue.”
The trio hopes to prevent bar staff from having experiences like Buckosh’s, who said he still remembers one particular overdose he witnessed.
“I have a regular, and he was not somebody who was known to do drugs or anything like that,” recalled Buckosh. “He came in one night while I was working, and I was busy. He was waiting for me to get him a drink, and I told him I'd be right with him. I walked down to the end of the bar, and I came back, and all of a sudden he was on the ground, unresponsive. We did not have Narcan in the bar at the time, which was the incident that prompted us to get that. But luckily, we had a nurse that happened to be there, and she told us what to do. We were able to get him to the hospital and he was okay.”
On the whole, “there's not a lot of places that haven't been affected by it.”
If you or someone you know needs help with substance abuse disorder, please contact the Nevada Helpline at 800-450-9530 or text IMREADY to 839863.
Guests: Ariann Chelli, clinical director, Desert Hope Treatment Center; Mathew “Buck” Buckosh, downtown bar manager; David Hart, ER doctor, MountainView Hospital
