EDWARDSVILLE – After announcing in November, 2018's drug-related death numbers had reached higher numbers than any previous year, Madison County Coroner Stephen Nonn released the complete 2018 numbers Thursday in a press release.
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Officially 109 drug-related deaths were directly resulted from drugs in Madison County. This is a drastic increase from 2017's 87 deaths and the former record of 91 deaths in 2014. Unlike 2014, which was a boom year for heroin in the county, heroin is not the leading cause of death. Its reign of terror has been usurped by an even greater synthetic foe – Fentanyl, specifically when mixed in a deadly cocktail with other drugs such as methadone, which is prescribed for addicts in recovery, cocaine and even methamphetamine.
“Fentanyl and its analogs has replaced heroin both here at home and nationwide,” Nonn said in the release. “Its ease of manufacture and delivery makes it more appealing than dealing in conventional opiate-derivative narcotics.”
Further investigations are still pending in the county, Nonn said, meaning that 109 number could potentially grow.
“We still have a number of deaths where analysis is pending,” he said in the release. “Although we can develop suspicions of drugs abuse from history and scene investigation, we still come across cases where drugs results come in that were not expected.”
Overall, Nonn's office generated reports on 2,714 cases in the county, which is a slight increase from 2017's 2,677 reports. The grand majority of those – 2,216 – were ruled as a natural event, meaning a loved one's physician certified the death certificate of the decedent.
Of those deaths requiring certification by Nonn or his investigators, 193 were natural causes, 160 were accidental, 45 were suicides, nine were homicides and 52 are currently pending cases. These numbers do not reflect people who were rushed to a St. Louis hospital (or anywhere outside of Madison County) where they did eventually died. These are all deaths within Madison County.
Overall, however, drugs seem to be the biggest blight facing the coroner's office – even playing a role in the suicide count.
“The bottom line to the year 2018 is that drugs continue to be a scourge and plague on the people of Madison County, bringing a tremendous amount of grief to people who are left behind in the wake of an addiction, which ends for some only with death,” Nonn said at the conclusion of that release.
