Report: 300 opioid overdoses in one month in Duval County

A Jacksonville Fire and Rescue Department source showed Action News Jax the shocking number of 911 responses to overdoses and the use of Narcan for the month of November in Duval County.

Laura Grippa, an emergency medicine physician at Baptist Health, said they see overdoses coming into their emergency room sometimes twice a day.

“The person will go from unresponsive no breathing, blue, no response, over painful stimuli to 10 seconds waking up looking at us saying 'where am I?'” Grippa said.

The numbers last month in Duval County alone are staggering: 349 overdose patients in total; 194 males, 155 females.

Eighty percent were white, 13 percent were black and a little over 2 percent were Hispanic.

Prescription opioids are expensive. Experts say addicts are turning to heroin because it’s cheaper and easier to get.

“We are starting to see more street drugs and heroin and in my training I hadn’t seen IV heroin. It wasn’t part of my training in the last year or two we are starting to see that again,” Grippa said.

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Cox Media Group