A recent surge in drug overdoses in Jackson County included eight cases at the county jail.

Over the past couple of weeks, local law enforcement,

emergency medical responders and hospital staff saw a

sudden spike in fentanyl-related overdoses, according to

an alert from the county’s Health & Human Services department.

Providence Medford Medical Center said it saw six

fentanyl overdoses, including one death, in a seven-hour period April 7.

Amid the latest uptick in 911 calls and hospital admissions are at least five deaths that officials suspect relate to fentanyl use, though toxicology reports are pending, said Tanya Phillips, the department’s health promotion program manager.

The people who overdosed at the jail are recovering, according to Capt. Joshua Aldrich, the jail commander.

Investigators believe they know who brought the drugs into the facility; criminal charges are forthcoming, he said.

In 2022, the jail had 11 overdoses that were reversed with the nasal spray Narcan, according to figures provided by the jail.

In November, an inmate — 34-year-old Sabrina Renee Decker of Central Point — died after experiencing a medical crisis in the jail, according to media reports at the time. The Jackson County Medical Examiner’s Office is determining the cause of death.

“Certainly, there was fentanyl involved in some capacity,” Sheriff Nathan Sickler said in an interview.

Aldrich said, “While we always believed that we were combatting the potential for drug use, fentanyl has really created the emergency overdose situations more than we ever saw in the past.”

Inmate overdoses often occur in bursts, Aldrich said. Last year, a month might pass without an overdose, followed by two or three at once.

Overdoses also tend to be localized in one or two of the more than 30 housing units in the jail, leading staff to believe the contraband came from a small number of individuals.

Aldrich said, based on anecdotal evidence, that it seems what occurs in the jail relates to what is occurring in the larger community. “If the local PDs and emergency responders were seeing overdose increases, then we were also seeing similar things happen in the jail,” he said.

The captain recently attended the annual American Correctional Association Conference, a national event. Contraband, especially fentanyl, eclipsed most topics, he said.

“This is not a local problem only,” Aldrich said. “It’s all over the country that they’re talking about fentanyl in corrections facilities.”

Drugs usually enter the Jackson County Jail in one of two ways, Aldrich said.

The less common way is through the mail, either hidden in packaging or dissolved onto paper that can then be ingested. This can be intercepted by jail staff searching the mail or by a drug K9 trained to identify contraband.

“Our staff does a really good job of catching that stuff, but you never know if you’re catching it all,” Aldrich said.

More commonly, adults in custody hide drugs in their anus or vagina.

Jail staff do a pat search on every arrestee at intake. For those who remain in custody, the jail uses two methods, either alone or in combination, to detect drugs.

Inmates may undergo a visual body cavity search — better known as a strip-search — by removing their clothing so jail staff can visually look for drugs hidden on their person.

Jail staff do not perform physical cavity searches. “The most intrusive search that we do at the jail is looking at somebody who’s unclothed,” Aldrich said.

Inmates can also go through a body scanner that looks at what’s inside them.

Items small enough, and hidden deep enough, are virtually impossible to detect in the unclothed search, and depending on the material, often don’t show up well on the body scanner.

Drugs like fentanyl that often come in powder or pill forms are difficult to see.

Fentanyl — a synthetic opioid “up to 50 times stronger than heroin,” according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — began turning up with increasing frequency around 2018. Three years later, the drug had become the main opioid in the local illicit drug supply, according to the county’s Health & Human Services department.

County jail staff has become proficient at recognizing and responding to initial signs of an overdose, in some cases before the inmate goes unconscious, Aldrich said.

By the time some inmates were on gurneys, they were answering questions. Deputies and jail medical staff “had gotten them to that point by their quick intervention,” Aldrich said.

In many housing units, the jail has installed boxes containing Narcan in case of emergency. If inmates sees a cellmate overdose, they can break open the box and administer the first dose of the nasal spray. Breaking the box also sends a screaming alarm to alert the deputies.

This device was used in one of the most recent jail overdoses, Aldrich said.

Sickler believes that Measure 110, which Oregonians passed in 2020, has contributed to the statewide rise in drug overdoses.

The measure lowered penalties for possessing small amounts of street drugs like heroin, cocaine, fentanyl and methamphetamine. Instead of getting arrested, people caught with the illicit substances receive $100 fines, which can be dismissed if offenders voluntarily seek addiction treatment. When the measure went into effect, the treatment and recovery infrastructure, funded with cannabis tax revenue, was not fully set up, and few people have availed themselves of the services that do exist.

Sickler acknowledged that other factors may be in play, including the introduction of fentanyl and limitations on drug treatment during the coronavirus pandemic.

“But in Oregon, we are unique because we’re the only state that has really said drugs should be decriminalized to this degree, and now we’re … reaping a lot of consequences from that, it seems,” Sickler said.

In 2021, 91 people died of drug overdoses in the county, according to data from the Jackson County Medical Examiner’s Office. In 2020, the total was 41; in 2019, 16.

“Not being able to intervene from a criminal justice standpoint, I think, is a significant contributor to these things, and it’s hurt our community overall,” Sickler said. “I mean, you look at the livability of Jackson County because some of the challenges we’ve had, and it seems that it hasn’t necessarily improved over the last few years.”

Overdose alert: Jackson County sees spike in 911 calls, ER admissions

Seven hours, six fentanyl overdoses, one death