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Lexington's Overdose Spike
Clip: Season 3 Episode 81 | 3m 48sVideo has Closed Captions
Lexington sees a spike in non-fatal overdoses.
The city of Lexington is taking steps to educate the public after a spike in non-fatal overdoses. The local health department says 24 people overdosed in the course of four days. For perspective, the health department says the city typically sees 10-17 overdoses in a week.
![Kentucky Edition](https://image.pbs.org/contentchannels/X3BbBFy-white-logo-41-rpuFQvn.png?format=webp&resize=200x)
Lexington's Overdose Spike
Clip: Season 3 Episode 81 | 3m 48sVideo has Closed Captions
The city of Lexington is taking steps to educate the public after a spike in non-fatal overdoses. The local health department says 24 people overdosed in the course of four days. For perspective, the health department says the city typically sees 10-17 overdoses in a week.
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Learn Moreabout PBS online sponsorshipLexington is seeing a spike in drug overdoses.
More in tonight's medical news.
The Lexington Fayette County Health Department says there were two dozen non-fatal overdoses during a four day period last week.
That is up from the average 10 to 17 overdoses a week.
The numbers were reported by the overdose detection mapping application system, but experts say the real number of overdoses in any given week is likely much higher.
We know that only about 30% of people call 911 when there is an overdose.
If they have Narcan, it's very likely that they are reviving someone and not calling EMS, particularly if this person is overdose before, if they're are fear of arrest or have drugs on property.
And so we are having community people reviving people who have overdosed and it's not getting reported.
And so it could be that those numbers that week were a lot higher.
But because of different situations, it's just not getting reported since these are nonfatal overdoses.
There's no toxicology report, but we do have a pretty good idea of what's in the area.
We're seeing a mix of fentanyl and a horse tranquilizer called Xylene in a mix that is the most fatal combination of illicit drugs that we've seen.
And so we are also seeing an increase in a mix of fentanyl again, and benzodiazepines like Xanax.
And so fentanyl has always been the driving force over the last few years for overdoses.
It is synthetic opioid.
It is made just from chemicals that you can purchase from China will sell you the chemicals, although they banned fentanyl.
And it seems like this is just a better business model for drug cartels and drug dealers where half a million doses can be held in your hand, concealed easily and distributed easy.
As I was saying, this horse tranquilizer, it's not a controlled substance because it's a veterinarian medicine and it is acting like an opioid.
But it's not.
And so when somebody overdoses on a mix of Zionism and fentanyl, we can give them Narcan and it will restore their breathing.
However, they may not wake up because it does not work on dowsing, because while it acts like one, it just is an opioid and naloxone or most people know it by Narcan only works on opioids.
And so unfortunately, what we're seeing is fentanyl mixed into just about everything that somebody could use.
It's in cocaine, it's mixed in with methamphetamine, it's mixed into THC vape cartridges and we have people that are pressing fentanyl to look like Xanax or Percocet or tab.
And all of this is getting into the streets and unfortunately, we're just seeing a ton of overdoses right now.
The illicit drug market is always changing.
It travels through different states to get here to Kentucky, and we never know what's coming next.
We never anticipated that fentanyl would even get in the mix before.
And that's where we're at now.
The Fayette County Health Department offers free Narcan kits to anyone who needs them.
They are available Mondays, Wednesdays and Thursdays following a short 15 minute class.
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