For African Americans, this year’s numbers represent a sharp increase in percentage of overall deaths, although it has been trending up for several years. (Photo by Adam Carr) The number of African Americans who die from drug overdoses in Milwaukee County continues to rise, with Black residents making up 45 percent of this year’s fatalities, according to the Medical Examiner’s Office. This compares to 43 percent for whites, 6 percent for Hispanics, and 3 percent for Native Americans. Last year, whites represented 59 percent of all drug overdose deaths in the county, compared with 28 percent for Blacks. Overall, there were 113 confirmed drug overdose deaths in the county in 2021, with 93 cases pending through May 13, according to data provided by Karen Domagalski, operations manager for the Milwaukee County Medical Examiner’s Office. At the current pace, we could experience a record high of 560 drug overdose deaths this year, Domagalski said. This would surpass previous record highs of 545 in 2020 and 418 in 2019. Do you have feedback on Milwaukee NNS's reporting? Take our survey to let us know how we're doing! For African Americans, this year’s numbers represent a sharp increase in the percentage of overall deaths, although it has been trending up for several years. In 2019, 27 percent of individuals who died from drug overdoses in Milwaukee County were African American, up slightly from 26.5 percent in 2018 and 22 percent in 2017. Those percentages equate to 89 victims in 2017, 102 in 2018, 113 in 2019, 153 last year, and 51 so far this year, with many cases still pending through mid-May. Unfortunately, those numbers don’t come as a shock to Desilynn Smith, clinical director at Gateway to Change, a treatment center located at 2319 W. Capitol Drive. Smith, a mental health therapist and substance use counselor, said six people she knows personally have died of drug overdoses this year. “It’s extremely heartbreaking,” she said. “It started hitting closer to home with the opioids and people still don’t talk about it.” Smith said part of the problem is the stigma in some parts of the Black community about mental illness and hard drug use as well as a lack of education on opiates. Smith conducts street outreach in high drug traffic areas and said that many of the people she talks to don’t even know how Narcan, which is used to reverse the effects of an opioid overdose, works. The number of African Americans who died of drug overdoses in Milwaukee County has increased each year since 2016. (Graphic by Dwayne Burtin) “They thought it was a needle, but it’s a nasal spray. The lack of education some of our communities have about [opioids] is astonishing to me,” Smith said. Ald. Khalif Rainey, a member of the City-County Heroin, Opioid and Cocaine Task Force who also represents parts of the 53206 ZIP code and other areas of the North Side on the Common Council, said often when he hears from residents about drugs, it’s about rolling drug houses. Few of those conversations are about drug use and drug addiction, he said. “It’s really a taboo type thing in our community, especially when you talk about certain drugs,” he said. “I feel like the approach we’re taking now with an opioid conversation, it’s not really resonating.” Rainey thinks outreach on opioids needs to be more specific to the African American population to raise awareness. “On social media, young people are talking about perc 30s (30 milligram Percocets) and lean (codeine and soda) and other drugs that are influenced by the culture, by music,” he said. “What [types of drugs] are we doing and how can we be more specific to address that?” Rainey said cocaine has also factored into the increase of drug overdose deaths among African Americans, mostly because that drug and many others are being cut with fentanyl, a synthetic opioid that can kill in trace amounts. In fact, 76 percent of fatal drug overdoses among African Americans involved fentanyl. These findings align with national trends. A recent brief from the National Institute of Health Care Management, citing Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data, found that an increasing number of fatal drug overdoses involved stimulants such as cocaine, many times in combination with fentanyl. In addition, a 2020 report issued by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration’s Office of Behavioral Health Equity, foreshadowed the situation in Milwaukee. The report states that the focus on the opioid epidemic mainly centered on white suburban and rural communities, but that Black communities were experiencing dramatic increases in drug overdose deaths.