JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – The tragic impact of the opioid epidemic seen almost daily by area emergency crews is only getting worse as new street drugs called analogues are making it harder to save lives during an overdose.
These analogues seen earlier this year in the Ohio Valley and the Medical Examiner's Office reports seeing more bodies in Jacksonville with lethal combinations of fentanyl analogues.
Doctors said these analogues are stronger than traditional fentanyl or heroin and being added to street drugs, making it harder for them to save the live of someone who has overdosed.
"They saturate the receptor, so when we use antaganistic Narcan, it won't work," Dr. Steven Goodfriend said.
Narcan is widely used to reverse on opioid overdose but, the fentanyl analogues are so strong, Narcan often doesn’t work, and overdose calls to 911 in Jacksonville have doubled every year for three years.
Sometimes Jacksonville Fire and Rescue has responded by doubling the Narcan dose for individual patients.
"These drugs can tranquilize an elephant. That’s how deadly they can be. You just don’t know what you are getting," Goodfriend said.
Florida's medical examiners released final data Wednesday on 2016's drug deaths shows a 35 percent increase in opioid-related deaths from the previous year.
The report, released by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, said there were 5,725 cases where opioids were identified as either the cause of death or merely present in the decedent's system. That is 1,483 more than 2015.
Of opioid deaths in the state last year, 965 of those people had used fentanyl analogs. That's more deaths than from heroin itself.
Occurrences of fentanyl increased by 80 percent, and deaths caused by fentanyl skyrocketed by 97 percent. The report noted that many of the fentanyl occurrences were illicitly produced instead of what is pharmaceutically manufactured.
Duval County is the only county where the per capita number of fentanyl deaths exceeded 25 per 100,000 residents. Palm Beach County has a death rate between 20 and 24.99 per 100,000.
DOCUMENT: FDLE's Drugs Identified in Deceased Persons annual report
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Dr. Raymond Pomm, who is leading that program and medical director of Gateway Community Services, is troubled by the increasing strength and deadly potential of the analogs.
"This is very disconcerting. It's getting scarier and scarier, and there are more potent ones out there," Pomm said.