Tom Kisken

tkisken@vcstar.com, 805-437-0255

Nearly half of the heroin-triggered emergency room visits by Ventura County residents over nine months last year involved millennials ages 20 to 29, according to new state data.

As of Sept. 30, 92 Ventura County residents had been treated and released in emergency rooms for conditions caused by heroin poisoning, according to records requested by The Star from the Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development.

If the pace of visits linked to heroin continued through the end of 2016, the tally would easily eclipse the 103 emergency room visits in 2015. It could narrowly surpass the 119 visits in 2012, the county's high point over six years.

"I think it's getting worse," said Dr. Martin Ehrlich, emergency room director for the Ventura County Medical Center. "I just see this constant drumbeat of people coming in the emergency room. A lot of them are new."

The numbers reflect a nationwide heroin problem that, in Ventura County, brought 33 deaths in 2015, up from 23 the previous year but still below the 43 deaths in 2012, according to records from the Ventura County Medical Examiner's Office.

Of the 92 heroin poisoning visits to the emergency room, 41 involved Ventura County residents ages 20 to 29. The second most involved age group was people 30 to 39, with 18 emergency room visits.

The new data does not include people admitted to the hospital but the trend extends to that group as well. Of the 11 Ventura County residents discharged from hospitals after heroin poisoning over the first half of 2016, eight were ages 20 to 29, according to separate state records.

The trend extends beyond county borders. Of 2,725 heroin-triggered emergency room visits across California for the first three quarters of 2016, 1,264, or about 46 percent, involved people ages 20 to 29, according to the Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development.

Doctors and others who deal with heroin addiction don't bat an eye at the age-range data.

"We see young kids in that age range who have escalated their drug use," said Ehrlich, noting people often show up in the ER after moving from other drugs to smoking heroin, then to injecting it. Often, they're using multiple substances.

"They come in, with you name it: overdose, skin infections, accidents," he said.

Heroin tightens deadly grip on county

People sometimes label heroin as an inner-city problem, but it hits anywhere, including suburban parts of eastern Ventura County, said Partrick Zarate, division manager for the alcohol and drug programs at the Ventura County Behavioral Health Department. He said the age data shows that addiction is increasingly affecting younger people.

"It's sort of blowing out of the water of the old stereotype of what people think of as a heroin addict," he said.

But while experts worry about heroin's spread into high schools, the data shows emergency room care involving teens on heroin has declined from 2012 when 18 ER visits involved Ventura County residents ages 10 to 19.

Through the first nine months of 2016, five ER trips involved people ages 10-19. In 2015, there were three ER visits involving the age group.

Pat Montoya leads Not One More, a Simi Valley parent-led group that fights addiction. He said the cycle of addiction sometimes means high school kids start abusing powerful painkillers in high school and then graduate to heroin.

"I think we're seeing more education in the schools, more awareness in the schools," he said. "We don't see the hard addiction until they get out."

Langston Jackson, once a football player at Simi Valley High School and then at UC Berkeley, was 22 when he was found unconscious draped over a couch because of a heroin overdose. He spent 37 days in a coma and nearly died.

Now, the Simi Valley resident gives speeches about his drug use and recovery and is pursuing a degree at CSU Northridge. He offered his theory of why millennials dominate heroin emergency room statistics.

"That's like when you get your freedom and you can do stuff," he said. "You think you're invincible. Nothing can happen."