Two reports offer different numbers for drug deaths in Pennsylvania
Glaring differences between two high-profile reports on how many people died from drug overdoses in Pennsylvania in 2014 have called into question the reliability of numbers given to the public on the toll of the heroin and opioid drug crisis.
The reports were produced by the Pennsylvania State Coroners Association and the federal Drug Enforcement Administration. The coroners association report lists 2014 drug death totals for Lehigh, Chester and Lebanon counties as 85, 82 and 15, while the federal report lists the totals as 66, 36 and 11, respectively.
The reports show large discrepancies involving many other counties, as well. Both got media coverage across the state.”I think it’s important to get the numbers right,” said Frances Cortez Funk, director of health promotion and alcohol and other drug services at Kutztown University. “The numbers are important because every number represents a life.”
Berks County Coroner Denny Hess said drug death numbers generated by coroners have changed as they pass through the state Department of Drug and Alcohol Programs, which has served as a resource for the DEA.
He said he had no indication the changes were intentional, but they made the information inaccurate.”Ours are real numbers,” he said. “Nobody is looking at the state and saying, ‘Why are they changing those numbers?’ “Hess’ office sends reports on drug deaths to DDAP and the state coroners association. The association’s legislative liaison, Susan Shanaman, said she has found inaccuracies in a DDAP spreadsheet on statewide drug deaths.”I have found discrepancies in the numbers, where I know the data has been sent to both DDAP and myself. I don’t have an explanation for why DDAP’s numbers are fewer,” Shanaman said.DDAP spokesman Jason Snyder said any assertion the department gave out information significantly different from what it had collected was “unequivocally false.”He said human error may have produced a few mistakes in a spreadsheet, but it would not explain the “sweeping discrepancies” between the two reports.”What comes in to DDAP goes out, just as it came in,” Snyder said.He stressed the importance of accurate data.”There is no question about that. We do need to come up with a way where we are sure what we are looking at is accurate,” Snyder said. “This is something on a lot of people’s radar screens.”But he said questions about the accuracy of two reports should be put to the organizations that produced them.On Wednesday afternoon, the author of the DEA report, Laura Hendrick, said in a telephone interview that DEA’s source material for its 2014 report included a spreadsheet from DDAP. She said it was understood that the spreadsheet was “not complete” because it did not include information from some counties.DEA will issue revisions to some of its 2014 numbers when it issues the 2015 report, Hendrick said. All of the revisions will be increases in county totals.State Rep. Gen Yaw, a Lycoming County Republican who has gone around the state for hearings about the heroin crisis, said he heard of differences between the reports and then learned that the DEA had changed its 2014 numbers.He said he believed the 2014 coroners association report was the more accurate of the two.But Shanaman, who compiled the association report, acknowledged it had at least one inaccuracy.The single largest county discrepancy involved Bucks, for which the coroners’ association reported 205 deaths and the DEA 113 deaths. In that case, Shanaman said her Bucks drug death tally included many fatalities where drugs were present but did not actually cause the death.”Bucks is the only one I did that on,” she said.Coroners are not required by law to report drug deaths. Some coroners – especially those in counties with very few deaths – worry that sharing data on them might lead to identities becoming known, against families’ wishes.Hendrick, who is the highest ranking intelligence officer in DEA’s Philadelphia Field Division, said the original sources for all the data in both reports are county coroners.In some cases, the DEA has issued subpoenas to obtain information from coroners, she said. The lack of mandatory reporting has hampered efforts to get good data.”We have struggled for years to get this information,” she said.At the same time, she said, the type of training and experience of each coroner may affect how they classify deaths. And they have latitude in deciding which deaths to report.”There is a lot of leeway,” she said.Yaw has floated a concept for strengthening the drug death reporting system with other lawmakers.He said, “We need accurate reporting.”Chuck Kiessling, Lycoming County coroner and president of the association, said it was vital to have accurate information. The number of deaths, he said, gives the public a “gauge” to measure the drug crisis.Shanaman said she believed coroners should remain the primary conduits for information.She described them as “the guys and gals who are there and who are seeing the bodies and seeing the deaths up close and personal.”
Filed under: General Problems
All these articles regarding false overdose statistics are simply more prof of the DEA crusaders campaign to totally stop the use of opiates all together. Their use of the guilt by association tactics is of the highest form of discrimination this country has experienced since the early 60s, and as long as government employees are involved in keeping the lies going. These malicious attacks against people in pain and the doctors who treat them will continue to get worse.
We can continue to produce actual statistics, we can continue to catch the Alphabet soup group in outrageous lies. What we can’t seem to do is get anyone who is not affiliated with the chronic pain community to listen. We write and call our senators and congressmen and all we ever get in response is a form letters or a generic answer. We email the news media with our concerns and all they do is use our words against us in attempts to concrete our illnesses as addiction. We need a different approach to our situation!
First, we are as a group or class of citizen not United yet. We need organization in numbers and we need to do this state by state. Every single state has federal buildings, and every single state has branch offices of the CDC, FDA and DEA. These agencies need to know of our numbers.
Next, we need leadership! We need a group of officers or a board to organize protests and or sit-ins at these federal buildings and state houses. PROTESTS GET PRESS! Until we can get people from the chronic pain community on the news telling our stories, the court of public opinion will continue to side with the lying bureaucrats from the DEA, CDC and FDA.
Finally, we need to turn our fear of loosing what medications we currently have into anger and determination. The fact that the government is using fear to drive their campaign is nothing short of KGB tactics to silence us. They spew negative propaganda to the general public inorder to single out each and every one of us as JUNKIES.
PRAVDA, the former Soviet news paper did exactly what every one of the US news agencies are doing today. They only reported on what the Soviet government and the KGB allowed them to report on. The truth that they printed was only the truths that the Soviet government decided was fact, even if it wasn’t. Only the government’s opinion was allowed and any citizen who opposed its beliefs were immediately discredited and punished for opposing. SOUND FAMILIAR??? Just look at the Anderson Cooper townhall. There was only one subject and that subject was exactly what the American KGB, (DEA) wanted it to be, ADDICTION. Yes, CNN allowed 2 pain sufferers to be there but only let 1 tell just enough of her story to look sound like an addict. Is CNN the new PRAVDA?
It’s now up to us to ” tear down that wall”. It’s now up to us to point out the lies and fabricated BULLSHIT our government is regurgitating to the masses. It’s time to get PISSED OFF and change the future of our existence. I am done hiding in the shadows waiting for our government representatives to get a clue and so should you all. Not a DAMN thing will ever get done by bitching, pissing and moaning to each other on Facebook and Twitter. Unless YOU, as a chronic pain sufferer, or YOU as a doctor who treats people in pain stand up and flip the DEA, CDC and FDA the BIRD. It’s time to exercise our 1st amendment rights to freedom of speech and rights to a free and peaceful assembly.
I am looking for help to get this idea of organization off the ground. I am looking for people who will be dedicated and not give in to FEAR. Finally, I am looking for people who are a little more tech savvy then I am. Someone who can help build a serious website to bring us all together and help to organize us all by state. Those interested can contact me by email at chronicpainsupertuesday@gmail.com. thanks and I hope to hear from people soon.
You will never get any large number of chronic painers to STAND UP… just look at all the petitions that have been started and how few have been signed. Congress works for us… 99% of Congress that runs for re-election get elected… If I was them… I would consider that a mandate to keep on doing what I have been doing. 80% of Congress is up for re-election in Nov … 485 in House and 34 in the Senate.. The biggest – most visible – protest that the chronic pain community can do is to exercise their right to vote ANONYMOUSLY … IMO … >50% of those running for re-election get tossed out – FIRED .. for not doing their job and representing their constituency. That will cause an acute epidemic of paranoia on The Hill… and I believe that collectively.. the hearing & listening of all 535 member of Congress will improve. BUT.. unless those in the chronic pain community can shed their hard-core personal beliefs that they MUST ALWAYS PULL that or lever that they always have … Nothing will change… except their level of pain increase .. as the politicians keep finding reasons to reduce the opiates that they can get and/or reduce the number of prescriber that will even write for opiates…