New Jersey overdose death 'numbers are scary'

Overdose deaths in New Jersey primarily stem from fentanyl, the president-elect of the New Jersey Additional Professional Association said.

Across the board agencies treating clients for addictions need to recognize the drugs are different, the association’s Ken Litwak told The Center Square.

“I know the agency where I work, we talk about the fact that we are treating clients for different drugs than we treated clients four years ago. It's not heroin any longer. It's fentanyl,” he said.

In addition to his work with the association, Litwak is the executive director of Gambling, Education and Community Relations for the John Brooks Recovery Center in Pleasantville, Atlantic City and Mays Landing, N.J.

Clients talk about fentanyl feeling different and having different effects on them, he said.

“There was a time when we talked about heroin addiction. We're really not talking about that. We're talking about fentanyl,” he said.

Discussions about overdoses are about fentanyl. When they look at toxicology reports, they are seeing fentanyl in clients’ systems. Few of those people have heroin in their system, he said.

New Jersey is one of the few states that did not have a statistically significant increase in overdose deaths in the first year of the pandemic, Litwak said.

“We're one of the very few states that can say that about. So, I think that really says that New Jersey's pulling out all the stops to do everything it can to combat the problems that it does have with substances,” he said. “When we talk about deaths related to overdoses, the numbers are scary.”

Eight states in 2020, the most recent year with statistics from the Centers for Disease Control, had higher numbers of overdose deaths. New Jersey had 2,840 deaths that year, but the state has a large population, he said.

It takes far less fentanyl to overdose a person, which is the word that probably hit the street most quickly, Litwak said. It seems that clients require a different dose of methadone to be comforted, he said.

The state has avenues to help with addiction treatment and prevention, he said.

“It's not gonna hurt to have more money for treatment, more money for prevention or money for training across the board,” he said.

Streamlining the process for addiction counselors to become licensed would help, he said.

“It can take years for a counselor to become a counselor, even after all the education requirements are met,” Litwak said.

More communication between counselors, addiction therapists and other professionals in the field would help, he said. The New Jersey Addiction Professionals Association is an organization that seeks to do just that.

Litwak said not everybody may realize that clients are being treated for fentanyl overdoses and addiction, and not heroin, which makes that communication more important.

The addiction professionals need to know what drugs they will be seeing next, which they can only learn with this communication from people on the street. Drugs like tranq – or xylazine, a strong sedative – present other problems.

“That's something that can't be touched by methadone or other opioid blocking drugs,” Litwak said about tranq. “So, people come in to detox and can't stay in detox, because we don't have any medication that can help them be comforted through detox. So they drop out.”