A new report from Public Health Watch has revealed an all-time high in the number of methamphetamine overdose deaths in Bexar County, prompting the county to declare a public health emergency.
On this edition of Weekend Insight, TPR's Jerry Clayton spoke with the author of the report, mental health reporter for Public Health Watch Gina Jimenez.
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity
Clayton: Tell me about how you gathered your data in reporting for the story.
Jimenez: So we worked with CDC provisional data, which is the information that the CDC publishes. In order to find the data, we were looking for, we had to use the same criteria that the Texas Health Department uses to measure overdose deaths in Texas. So it's quite interesting because the way these deaths are categorized is by every death in which any of these drugs are involved.
Clayton: You say in your article that the local health department plans to declare a public health emergency based on this new data? What would that look like? And do you think it would help?
Jimenez: I think that's a very interesting question because even in the community health meeting in which the chief mental health officer announced this, one of the persons asked her, 'hey, what does this trigger?' And it doesn't seem like much. It's mainly a symbolic thing. It's not gonna trigger any additional funding or anything automatically — which obviously isn’t great. Some of my sources were like, of course, we need more money. Like it's a problem that we can solve with resources only. But it does kind of help. It does set signs and sends a signal that the CDC is working on it, and it can also help other people, especially advocates or researchers who can use this [information] to get more funding.
Clayton: As much as we hear about opioids like fentanyl, was it surprising to see that methamphetamine deaths are increasing?
Jimenez: I was quite surprised by that. And that's why we thought it was worth doing this story. I actually talked to one researcher who said that it's almost like a whack-a-mole game sometimes with drug use. Like one week we're dealing with one, and then something else gets worse. So yeah, I was quite surprised by that. And there are also some challenges with treating methamphetamine use disorder that we don't have with opioids. I would also say that opioid deaths are not like, 'we're not done with that.' We still have a lot of work to do there.
Clayton: From what you've seen, is this happening in other major Texas cities?
Jimenez: Yes. Actually, it seems to be happening in all of the U.S., like one of my sources definitely said, 'Yeah, what we're seeing in Bexar County is a reflection of the trends in the whole country.' What experts told me was that this has been happening for a while, but it seems like the pandemic really made things worse — the despair, the boredom, people just starting using more during the pandemic, and we're dealing with the aftermath of that.
Clayton: There seems to be plenty of effort revolving around enforcement and even incarceration of drug dealers. But what about the people who are suffering and need treatment?
Jimenez: Yes, there's a lot of need for treatments for both things — the overdose itself, but also for people who are using methamphetamine. We don't have a treatment for substance use disorder for those people. And we should really be thinking about those families. I talked to a few family members of people who are struggling with addiction, and one of them told me you really don't know how much we need this until you face this among the people you love. So yeah, I think the resources and the research must come.
