1 week Ago By TERRY FLORES [email protected]
The Kenosha County Medical Examiner’s Office is anticipating a decrease in autopsies it expects to perform in 2025, due in large part to a steep drop in deaths resulting from drug overdoses. In 2023, deaths from drug overdoses made up nearly half of the office’s case load. Last year and in 2022, confirmed drug fatalities were at 58 each year, and represented record-high numbers, according to Medical Examiner Patrice Hall’s report to the Finance Committee in August.
At the Human Services Committee budget hearings Wednesday night, however, Hall reported encouraging news – those deaths are down significantly. So far this year, Kenosha County’s confirmed deaths stands at 23. “That is a nationwide trend that we are seeing,” Hall said.
“It’s just significantly declined. So, it’s a positive thing we are seeing the overdose deaths (have) significantly declined.” According to Lori Plahmer, health division director, a major reason for the turnaround is the use of naloxone to reverse opioid overdoses.
“One of the elements to the decrease in overdoses was a significant saturation of Narcan in the nation, which is also very relevant to our community,” Plahmer said. “So, we’re seeing a correlation now nationally be reported of Narcan distribution and training and a decrease in our overdoses.” The number of autopsies for next year is anticipated to decrease from 157 to 130, and pediatric post mortems by half to two, a $38,000 drop compared with this year, according to the budget.
A standard autopsy costs the county $1,800 and $5,000 for pediatric postmortem in the case of a child’s death. This year, the county budgeted $302,600 for autopsies. Tammy Capito, the department’s chief financial officer, said while autopsies are currently projected to number 108, 130 is still considered a conservative estimate.
“If we were straight-line where we’re at right now, we’d be at 108. We’re not going down to where we’re at now because we’ve been up many years and we’ve been down many years,” she said. The medical examiner’s total budget is expected to decrease, from $2,564 to $1,085,957 compared with 2024.
The levy for the office is expected to increase just under $3,000 to $628,501, a half of a percentage from this year. The increases are due in part to annual salary and pay structure increases. In addition to the medical examiner’s budget, the committee approved the overall 2025 budget for the Human Services Department, which also includes Brookside Care Center and Willowbrook, central services, children and family services; health services; aging and disability services; behavioral health, workforce development veterans services and the director’s office.
Next year, the department expects to spend $112,595,598 next year, up $4,120,734, a 3.8% increase compared with 2024. Revenues for the department are increasing by $3,296,463, also up 3.
8 %, or from $87,839,900 to $91,136,363. According to the proposed budget, the department’s levy will increase by $1,268,165, up 6.1%, from $20,641,216 to $21,909,381.
What are the most addictive drugs? This question seems simple, but the answer depends on whom you ask. From the points of view of different researchers, the potential for a drug to be addictive can be judged in terms of the harm it causes, the street value of the drug, the extent to which the drug activates the brain's dopamine system , how pleasurable people report the drug to be, the degree to which the drug causes withdrawal symptoms, and how easily a person trying the drug will become hooked. There are other facets to measuring the addictive potential of a drug, too, and there are even researchers who argue that no drug is always addictive.
Given the varied view of researchers, then, one way of ranking addictive drugs is to ask expert panels. In 2007, David Nutt and his colleagues asked addiction experts to do exactly that — with some interesting findings. Although legal in the US and UK, alcohol was scored by Nutt et al.
's experts 1.9 out of a maximum of 3. Alcohol has many effects on the brain, but in laboratory experiments on animals it increased dopamine levels in the brain's reward system by 40% to 360% — and the more the animals drank the more dopamine levels increased.
Some 22% of people who have taken a drink will develop dependence on alcohol at some point during their life. The WHO has estimated that 2 billion people used alcohol in 2002 and more than 3 million people died in 2012 due to damage to the body caused by drinking. Alcohol has been ranked as the most damaging drug by other experts, too.
Barbiturates — also known as blue bullets, gorillas, nembies, barbs and pink ladies — are a class of drugs that were initially used to treat anxiety and to induce sleep . They interfere with chemical signalling in the brain, the effect of which is to shut down various brain regions. At low doses, barbiturates cause euphoria, but at higher doses they can be lethal because they suppress breathing.
Barbiturate dependence was common when the drugs were easily available by prescription, but this has declined dramatically as other drugs have replaced them. This highlights the role that the context plays in addiction: if an addictive drug is not widely available, it can do little harm. Nutt et al's expert panels rated barbiturates as the fourth most addictive substance.
Nicotine is the main addictive ingredient of tobacco. When somebody smokes a cigarette, nicotine is rapidly absorbed by the lungs and delivered to the brain. Nutt et al's expert panels rated nicotine (tobacco) as the third most addictive substance.
More than two-thirds of Americans who tried smoking reported becoming dependent during their life. In 2002 the WHO estimated there were more than 1 billion smokers and it has been estimated that tobacco will kill more than 8 million people annually by 2030. Laboratory animals have the good sense not to smoke.
However, rats will press a button to receive nicotine directly into their bloodstream -- and this causes dopamine levels in the brain's reward system to rise by about 25% to 40% . Workers test seized cocaine to be destroyed at a police base in Lima, Peru, Wednesday, Oct. 10, 2018.
(AP Photo/Martin Mejia) Cocaine directly interferes with the brain's use of dopamine to convey messages from one neuron to another. In essence, cocaine prevents neurons from turning the dopamine signal off, resulting in an abnormal activation of the brain's reward pathways. In experiments on animals, cocaine caused dopamine levels to rise more than three times the normal level.
It is estimated that between 14 million and 20 million people worldwide use cocaine and that in 2009 the cocaine market was worth about $75 billion. Crack cocaine has been ranked by experts as being the third most damaging drug and powdered cocaine, which causes a milder high, as the fifth most damaging. About 21% of people who try cocaine will become dependent on it at sometime in their life.
Cocaine is similar to other addictive stimulants, such as methamphetamine -- which is becoming more of a problem as it becomes more widely available -- and amphetamine. Nutt et al.'s experts ranked heroin as the most addictive drug, giving it a score of 3 out of a maximum score of 3.
Heroin is an opiate that causes the level of dopamine in the brain's reward system to increase by up to 200% in experimental animals . In addition to being arguably the most addictive drug, heroin is dangerous, too, because the dose that can cause death is only five times greater than the dose required for a high. Heroin also has been rated as the second most harmful drug in terms of damage to both users and to society.
The market for illegal opiates, including heroin, was estimated to be $68 billion worldwide in 2009. Hall Stay up-to-date on the latest in local and national government and political topics with our newsletter. Reporter {{description}} Email notifications are only sent once a day, and only if there are new matching items.
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