With high levels of overdoses and drug deaths across South Carolina, state agencies are now offering a chance for the public to monitor drugs of concern in their own communities.Â
The South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control is also offering greater transparency on non-fatal overdoses in the state.
DHEC and the state Department of Alcohol and Other Drug Abuse Services have launched new interactive dashboards as a way for people in communities to not only look at the Palmetto State as a whole, but also what is being dispensed in their particular county.
"This data is going to help everyone working to address the drug crisis," said Sara Goldsby, director of DAODAS.
"I think this dashboard is going to be a big part of doing that," said Dr. Edward Simmer, director of DHEC.
South Carolina has run a prescription monitoring program since 2008 and publishes annual reports, but the new dashboards allow the public to look at opioids; stimulants; and benzodiazepines, or depressants, in a more in-depth and timely way. They also allow the public to see at a local level, said Chelsea Townsend, director of the monitoring program.
The dashboard are maintained separately by drug category, but once you click on one link, opioids for example, you can then also click on tabs to access the other drug categories.
It allows the public to look at trends over time for each drug, and what they were prescribed for, said Samantha Donnelly, the epidemiologist for the program. For instance:
- Opioid prescriptions were down 1 percent January to March, compared to the year before, and were down 2 percent among those given to patients for pain while prescriptions for opioid addiction treatment were up 4 percent. Most opioids were prescribed to seniors age 65 and older.
- Stimulant prescriptions were up 6 percent compared to the same period the year before, with the largest amount going to children up to age 17. Those prescriptions hit a two-year high at 217,089 in January of this year.
- Depressants were down 2 percent overall, with the most common being alprazolam, or Xanax, which is also the most-prescribed drug for anxiety disorders in the U.S. The largest amount went to seniors, as well.
Major metro areas of the state varied slightly from those trends over the past year:
- Charleston County saw a 4 percent drop in opioid prescriptions and a 5 percent decrease in depressants but a 7 percent increase in stimulants.
- Greenville County had no change in opioids prescribed but a 4 percent decline in depressants and a 6 percent rise in stimulants.
- Horry County had a slight drop in opioids and depressants at 1 percent each but an 8 percent increase in stimulants.Â
- Richland County had a similar decline in opioids at 1 percent, a 4 percent drop in depressants and a 5 percent uptick in stimulants.
This kind of detailed view can help the public and groups work together to address "this terrible crisis," Simmer said.
DHEC has also launched a public dashboard for the public to see data analyzed from non-fatal overdoses from samples sent from participating hospitals in South Carolina.
So far in 2024, there have been 945 samples analyzed, with the most common drugs being methamphetamine, cocaine and fentanyl. In fact, fentanyl was present in 16 percent of all of the samples analyzed so far.
Public health officials have blamed illegal fentanyl for a majority of overdose deaths in the U.S. in the last few years.
