The Portland Police Department said Tuesday that fatal drug overdoses in the city so far this year already have surpassed the total for all of last year, mirroring a statewide trend.
The department said that its officers had responded to 28 fatal overdoses as of Tuesday, eclipsing the 23 that occurred in all of 2021.
In addition, police have responded to an 84 percent increase in overdoses overall compared to the same period in 2020 and 2021, the department said. There have been 238 overdoses in Portland so far in 2022, police said, and officers have used Narcan, an opioid overdose reversal treatment, to revive people 41 times. Overdose patients were taken to a hospital 99 times this year and patients refused further help 111 times.
“It’s clear that the opioid epidemic is not slowing down and we are on track to surpass the record set in 2017 of 436 overdoses,” Interim Police Chief F. Heath Gorham said in a statement.
Portland police said over the weekend that dangerous opioids were being distributed and used in Portland. Five people overdosed in the city and police said they took heroin that was contaminated with a type of animal tranquilizer that can cause wounds in which skin tissue dies as well as other serious injuries or death.
Statewide, drug overdoses, both fatal and non-fatal, also are running above the rate for 2021, which set a record with 636.
According to the Maine Drug Data Hub, operated by the Maine Attorney General and the Office of Behavioral Health, there have been 266 fatal overdoses in the state through May, above the 244 recorded in Maine through the same period last year.
There have been 3,962 overdoses in the state this year through the end of May, compared with 3,292 in 2021 during the same time period.
The state report also said that, last year, the state averaged 658 overdoses a month, with averages of 49 fatal overdoses and 609 non-fatal. For the first five months of this year, the average number of overdoses per month was 792, with 53 being fatal and 739 non-fatal.
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