City fentanyl fatalities may be down, but use of meth is skyrocketing, police say

Methamphetamine, known as meth or crystal meth on the street, wreaks havoc on the brain, releasing abnormal amounts of dopamine, a naturally occurring neurotransmitter that makes us feel good about ourselves when we accomplish something.

ROCHESTER - The COVID pandemic fueled not only the largest death toll from an infectious disease in more than a century. In 2021 it also wrought the single-largest increase in drug overdose deaths in recorded history, rising some 30 percent to an astounding 93,000 according to CDC numbers.

Except that is, in New Hampshire and South Dakota.

There are no studies that formally address the causes for the dichotomy, but numbers from Rochester Police bear out the same statistics.

Looking at year-to-date numbers since 2019 reveal a steady decline in fentanyl overdose fatalities, according to statistic released from Rochester Police this month.

They show 17 fatal overdoses year-to-date in 2019, nine year-to-date in 2020 and seven this year.

Rochester Police Capt. Todd Pinkham said the availability and widespread distribution of Narcan, an overdose antidote, to addicts and their associates could have something to do with it, but it's not clear if that is the only variable.

However, recent trends in calls for service regarding incidents suspected to be drug related indicate that the use of methamphetamine has more than doubled in the past year.

While police calls for service don't denote the specific drug of origin, Pinkham said that calls for service where the exhibited behavior "mimics" that of meth accounted for 29 year-to-date in 2020, compared to 64 this year.

"There has been a shift in drug use," Pinkham said. "There's a lot more meth use, compared to what we used to get."

Methamphetamine, known as meth or crystal meth on the street, wreaks havoc on the brain, releasing abnormal amounts of dopamine, a naturally occurring neurotransmitter that makes us feel good about ourselves when we accomplish something.

That particular kind of high often makes a user hyperactive, hyper-alert, even euphoric, confident, talkative and feeling "on top of the world," said Nathan Cermelj of Scarborough, Maine, a former longtime meth user.

A report published earlier this month by the American Medical Association shows another troubling wrinkle in the war on drugs, noting that "the epidemic now is driven by illicit fentanyl, fentanyl analogs, methamphetamine, and cocaine, often in combination or in adulterated forms."