Latest / Early Edition with Ryan Bridge / Sarah Helm: NZ Drug Foundation Executive Director on the new report showing three people are dying a week from preventable overdoses

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Sarah Helm: NZ Drug Foundation Executive Director on the new report showing three people are dying a week from preventable overdoses · Early Edition with Ryan Bridge

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: So a new report out from the Drug Foundation says
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: three New Zealanders a week are needlessly dying to overdoses.
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: Last year, we had 169 people dying because of an
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: accidental overdose. We've had 1,440 in the last decade. And
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  Speaker 1: Sarah Helm is the executive director of the Drug Foundation
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  Speaker 1: and joins me now. Good morning to you, Sarah.
• 0:20
  Speaker 2: Good morning.
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: This is sad and tragic news. So what are we
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: overdosing on the most?
• 0:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a lot of fatalities. It's a lot of
• 0:27
  Speaker 2: wasted potential. Opioids are the leading cause of fatalities, and
• 0:34
  Speaker 2: within that 10-year period, synthetic cannabinoids also feature. Benzodiazepines, that's
• 0:41
  Speaker 2: things like diazepam, followed by alcohol and stimulants.
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: And we mix drugs.
• 0:48
  Speaker 2: We do, and 85% of fatalities are the person had
• 0:54
  Speaker 2: more than one thing in their system. Now, half of
• 0:57
  Speaker 2: the time, that included alcohol, and alcohol is a depressant,
• 1:02
  Speaker 2: so if you have a benzo or an opioid in
• 1:04
  Speaker 2: your system plus alcohol, that can equate to death. But
• 1:09
  Speaker 2: two depressants, your body might start shutting down.
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: Are we getting better, or are we going backwards?
• 1:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah, well, we've gotten slightly worse over that time, and
• 1:19
  Speaker 2: I think part of the issue is Nobody's really calculated
• 1:23
  Speaker 2: these stats before other than us in the last few years.
• 1:26
  Speaker 2: So we now have a picture and we can do
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  Speaker 2: something about it. I mean, for example, who knew that
• 1:33
  Speaker 2: 45 to 54-year-olds are the group that are most likely
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  Speaker 2: to die from overdose?
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: So if you look at the numbers coming out of America,
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  Speaker 1: and I did this morning, and they're shocking, three deaths
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  Speaker 1: a week means we're actually, dare I say it, doing
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: better or doing well in comparison. What do you put
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: all that down to? Is this a scourge for us?
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  Speaker 1: Is this a worldwide trend that we are following? Or
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: where do we stand?
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  Speaker 2: To compare domestically, it compares to, say, drownings. It's over
• 2:10
  Speaker 2: twice the number of people we lose to drownings. Or,
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  Speaker 2: for example, like over half the road toll, close to two-thirds.
• 2:17
  Speaker 2: So compared to what we lose people to, it's concerning.
• 2:21
  Speaker 2: I tried to do exactly what you did, and I
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  Speaker 2: looked at a table of European countries, and we sat
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: in about the middle. But I was reminded by my
• 2:30
  Speaker 2: science team that we can't quite do that because the
• 2:34
  Speaker 2: different countries will have measured it differently. However, we really
• 2:38
  Speaker 2: want to see these figures become government stats, and they
• 2:42
  Speaker 2: could do a better job of that comparison.
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  Speaker 1: Well, what is the job that we can do better?
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  Speaker 1: How can we fix this in any way?
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  Speaker 2: Well, I think one of the things is we don't
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  Speaker 2: have a national surveillance system. A charity is trying to
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: cobble these stats together. They should be held by government.
• 2:58
  Speaker 2: We should have a national plan. And there are some
• 3:00
  Speaker 2: specific things, like Australia has this amazing, very successful, for
• 3:05
  Speaker 2: us it wouldn't even cost very much, naloxone, take-home naloxone scheme.
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  Speaker 2: Naloxone reverses opioid overdose, which is our leading cause of fatalities.
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  Speaker 2: We'd really love to see something like that. We have
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  Speaker 2: managed to get naloxone slightly more available, but we could
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  Speaker 2: do with that improvement, might bring those cases down.
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  Speaker 1: Fighting drugs with drugs?
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  Speaker 2: Well, yeah, medicine. Medicine can help, apparently, for sure.
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: Okay. Sarah, thank you. I thank you for your time today.
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  Speaker 1: Sarah Helm is the Drug Foundation Executive Director.
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• 3:44
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• 3:47
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