May 8, 2015 2 min read

Drug overdose deaths increased by 20 percent last year across Pennsylvania, and the numbers are expected to rise even higher in 2015, a state Coroners Association report shows.

There were 2,489 such deaths in Pennsylvania last year, and the vast majority of them involved the use of more than one drug. Eight hundred of the deaths involved heroin overdoses, the report states.

“The deaths are just the tip of the iceberg,” said the association’s solicitor, Susan M. Shanaman, referring to prescription drug abuse and the heroin epidemic.

She said keeping track of drug overdose deaths helps to create knowledge about the problem.

“All we know is we’re learning from one death at a time,” Shanaman said.

She said more data needs to be collected from police, hospitals and emergency services to have more accurate data on the drug problem in terms of how many people overdose and survive.

“That would give us a bigger piece of the puzzle,” she said.

Waynesburg police Chief Rob Toth reached a conclusion similar to the one in the report.

“It’s not just deaths, but the overdoses when officers and EMS have gotten there in time,” Toth said. “It has increased and it’s running crazy like the plague, almost.

“The deaths have increased, obviously, but just the overdoses themselves are out of hand.”

There were 36 drug overdose deaths in Washington County last year, Washington County Coroner Tim Warco said. Thirty-three percent of them involved the use of opioids, and 22 percent of the deaths involved the use of illegal drugs, including heroin, according to the report.

There were 10 overdose deaths in 2014 in Greene County. Half of those deaths involved people who were between the ages of 51 to 60, and the vast majority of them were men. About a third of the overdoses resulted from opioids. Twenty percent of them resulted from illegal drugs.

In Pennsylvania, eight percent of the overdose deaths involved methadone and suboxone, drugs that are prescribed to treat heroin addiction. The numbers also indicate that seven people die from drug overdoses each day in Pennsylvania.

Fifty-four of the state’s 67 counties submitted records for the report.

The drug overdose figure in Washington County declined last year from a record-setting 58 in 2013.

Washington County Coroner Tim Warco could not be reached Friday to discuss the report.

Greene County Bureau Chief Mike Jones contributed to this report.