Overdose deaths set record in U.S. but not in Carson City

The Centers for Disease Control reported this week that overdose deaths set a record in the U.S. in 2020, accounting for more than 93,000 fatalities.

Carson City is an exception.

Carson Sheriff Ken Furlong said there were three overdose deaths in the capital during 2020 and, through the first half of this year, one.

He said Carson has its share of drug overdoses but that they rarely result in death.

“Death by overdose in Carson is very low,” he said.

Furlong said that’s a result of a combination of factors including the fact that because Carson is compact geographically, medical care is available very quickly. In addition, his deputies as well as medics have the auto-injector pens that can quickly reverse the effects of an opioid overdose.

According to the CDC, the national numbers are 30 percent higher than they were in 2019 because of the spread of opioids and synthetic opioids — fentanyl.

Furlong said that, in 2020, drug users got out of hand because the pandemic shut down most counseling and P&P officers were much more restricted in their ability to monitor people.

“Now we’re pushing back hard,” he said.

He said going after the users, which clearly shows in the arrest reports by his deputies, cuts back the crimes drug addicts commit to pay for their habit including robberies, homicides and burglaries.

“Going after the users, in effect, probably saves lives,” he said.

In addition, counseling centers and other support systems are back in business.

Carson also doesn’t suffer from another issue experts fear may be aggravated by the pandemic — an increased suicide rate. National data on actual suicides wasn’t available but emergency room visits for attempted suicides did increase among teens, according to the CDC.

Furlong said there have been 10 so far this year. He blamed a spike of four in April that was unusual because it was women shooting themselves. It’s rare for women to commit suicide with a firearm.

He blamed isolation for some suicide deaths saying, “an awful lot of folks in Carson live alone.” During the pandemic, they were even more isolated.

But suicides dropped from 16 in 2019 to 12 in 2020.

Furlong said one interesting finding in studying the issue is that the capital’s population is pretty much stagnant. It was 56,505 in 2009. According to the state demographer, it was 56,434 in 2020. He said the city loses about 1,000 people a year and about the same number move each year.