CHARLOTTE — There’s a troubling statistic in Mecklenburg County that points to a growing problem: overdose deaths for Black and Latino people have tripled across Mecklenburg County since 2019.
Channel 9′s Evan Donovan met with people working to reverse the trend, but the community is seeing a new wave of drug overdoses because of fentanyl.
Lewis Cousart is in recovery from drug use now, but he says by the time he was 19, he had moved on from marijuana to cocaine, then crack.
“It got real bad, real fast,” Cousart told Donovan.
Nine years ago next week, he hit the low point.
“I think suicide was an option at that time. And I remember I was laying on the floor and the person whose house I was over was like ‘Get out.’ And I’ve been told to get out of a lot of places in my life, but it was just something about this time that it just touched somewhere, it did,” Cousart said. “When I look back, I realize that was the best ‘get out’ I’ve ever heard.”
Cousart is now a recovery specialist at the McLeod Center, and he helps others start their journeys to stopping drug use.
But sadly, many people aren’t making it to their turnaround. The Mecklenburg County Health Department released data last week showing overdose deaths among Black and Latino people have tripled since 2019. That’s compared to a 14% increase among white people.
“This is currently the fourth wave of our overdose crisis,” said Dr. Logan Adams, the medical director at the McLeod Center.
Adams says after the first wave of overdoses from prescription opioids, doctors stopped prescribing pills. That led people to overdose on more accessible heroin. The third wave was when fentanyl, which is much stronger and cheaper, replaced heroin. Now, fentanyl is causing overdoses in the use of other drugs.
“There’s this process of cutting. So if you think about it, somebody could be cutting cocaine on the same countertop as they’re cutting fentanyl, and that cross-contamination from the prior cut of fentanyl getting into the stimulant,” Adams said.
Cousart thinks it’s a tragic situation, but he’s happy he’s still here to give hope to others.
“We call it, ‘Hearing Other People’s Experience,’ and a lot of the people I am able to talk to and give hope to, they look at it like ‘Yo, if you can do it, I can do it, too,’” Cousart said.
Adams said seizures by the Drug Enforcement Administration show drugs are relatively pure coming into the country, so fentanyl is being added at the local level.
The medical director says not using drugs is the safest, but harm reduction is also key. Users can get fentanyl strips to test their drugs, and he recommends everyone have access to Narcan in their first aid kid, even if you don’t use drugs.
(VIDEO: ‘You’re not alone’: Woman forms nonprofit after daughter dies from overdose)
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