While drug deaths from fentanyl have gone down in Manitowoc County, deaths from an easily accessible drug have gone up.
Coroner Curt Green explained last week on WOMT’s Be My Guest program that last year, the county had only 10 drug overdose deaths compared to around 30 in prior years when fentanyl was a major cause.
However, Green is seeing more deaths from alcohol.
“There were 37 alcohol related deaths,” he noted. “And what that means is that the alcohol abuse over the years has damaged them in some way.”
Green also noted that acute alcohol intoxication is a problem, with the highest blood alcohol level he’s seen being at a .91.
Green explained, “These are your everyday drinkers that, you know, they have to have that alcohol in the morning to keep the shakes away and things like that.”
The coroner noted that while the cause of death might be from something else, alcoholism was a factor.
With fentanyl deaths years ago, Green mentioned that at times his office was responding two to three times a month.
Within the last year, Manitowoc County received two public-health vending machines, which are stocked with fentanyl testing strips or Narcan, which can be used to reverse the effects of an overdose.
