our view

Those among us who have lost a loved one to an overdose will tell you there are always unanswered questions.

So, too, will those who are watching the whirlpool of addiction engulf a family member or friend, a co-worker or neighbor.

They can tell you who is taking what, where they get their particular poison and when, sometimes to the day, it grabbed hold and refused to let go.

What they can’t always tell you, what can’t be found on a spreadsheet, or in national statistics — or an autopsy — is the why.

Physicians and psychologists, counselors and law enforcement officers can offer their best interpretations of the available facts — honed from years of experience with those for whom using seems no longer like an option.

And when overdoses spike — as Jackson County is experiencing at the moment — the question of “Why?” intensifies within the public at large, even as those same professionals do their best to quell the latest crisis.

The Medford Police Department this week attributed 22 deaths since the start of the year, what it called a “staggering” number, to overdoses, primarily from fentanyl — the highly addictive synthetic opioid described by national health officials as “50 times stronger than heroin.”

Jackson County’s Health & Human Services Department issued an overdose alert at the beginning of April after a slew of fentanyl-related cases that the department’s Tanya Phillips called “the highest number to date, since I began documenting this.”

The public has been alerted to the fentanyl spike — which saw 27 reported overdoses during the first week of April, including six within a 7-hour period April 7 at Providence Medford Medical Center — when the year-to-date average had been eight.

As bad as such numbers are — and there are plenty of other alarming statistics — they might be just scratching the surface. Official figures include only those overdoses accounted for by those calling 911 or going to an emergency room.

“But when these systems start to see an increase,” Phillips told the Rogue Valley Times, “then we know there’s something going on much bigger.

“It just gives us enough information to say, ‘Hey, something isn’t right.’”

What “isn’t right” is now showing up with finality. Even before this week’s announcement from MPD, overdose deaths had grown exponentially in Jackson County — from 2019 to 2021, for instance, the number of fatalities, while still in double-digits, showed a 469% increase.

How it came to get this bad, this quickly, is open to interpretation.

Fentanyl’s meteoric rise as the drug of choice is certainly one factor. According to Sheriff Nathan Sickler — after a string of overdoses arose inside the walls of the Jackson County Jail — the state’s relaxing of penalties for drug possession, which came during the pandemic when there was insufficient treatment and recovery infrastructure, certainly added to the problem, if only through a conflux of unfortunate timing.

But there are, distressingly, countless reasons — internal, infernal answers that don’t adhere to a one-size-fits-all methodology. Drug abuse is, as it has always been, an individual path traveled for reasons that too often remain a mystery.

As the county struggles to stem this latest tide, even before daring to think of its possible reversal, it’s that question of “Why?” that still lingers.

And — as any among us whose lives have felt its impact could tell you — it can remain elusive beyond the grave.