In spring, the news broke that Rekha Luther, the assistant dean at Pembroke Academy, was arrested on charges she had heroin and steroids in her desk at school.
Luther had actually been arrested back in February, but school officials kept quiet about the incident until the news broke two months later, setting off questions and outrage among many students and parents.
The dean of students was later indicted on four felonies, including two enhanced felonies charging her for possessing narcotics in a drug free school zone. Her case is set to go to trial in 2017.
Though Pembroke police initially reported Luther was possessing heroin, they later updated their finding to fentanyl – a much deadlier synthetic opioid.
Luther’s story was surprising, but it’s one that’s increasingly common as New Hampshire grapples with its multi-year addiction crisis.
New Hampshire now has the third highest per-capita drug deaths in the nation, behind West Virginia and New Mexico. Drugs killed over 430 people in the state last year. The drug death tally for 2016 is closing in on 500.
Fentanyl is especially blamed for the state’s skyrocketing death rate. It’s implicated in two-thirds of the total overdose deaths in the state so far this year.
The state’s opioid epidemic, like those in many other states, grew roots when doctors overprescribed prescription narcotics like OxyContin and hydrocodone.
The New Hampshire Attorney General’s office is currently involved in a lawsuit against OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma, investigating the drug makers on the basis of its giving doctors “misleading information” about the effectiveness and safety of OxyContin.
In 2014, Purdue sales representatives visited New Hampshire 217 times. The company has been fighting the attorney general’s request for documents tooth and nail, appealing the decision to the state Supreme Court.
“What are they so worried about if there’s nothing there?” Attorney General Joe Foster said in a June interview.
This year also saw state lawmakers pass a number of measures in a special legislative session to increase state resources to fight the drug crisis, including passing new laws to get state medical and pharmacy boards passing new regulations cutting down on overprescribing, boosting Narcan availability, and directing more state money toward treatment and recovery centers.
State health officials and treatment advocates say though there’s still a long way to go, the initial results are encouraging.
In addition to opening new residential facilities, many outpatient programs are also being developed, with the idea that people can access treatment in their communities, with minimal interruption.
“There’s a lot more coverage, at least for outpatient services,” said N.H. Bureau of Drug and Alcohol Services Administrator Jaime Powers in an interview this summer. “It’s certainly leaps and bounds past where we were a couple of years ago.”
State officials are expecting another infusion of cash to fight the drug crisis, after the U.S. Congress recently passed a law containing $1 billion in money for treatment, prevention and recovery.
The funding is formulated so that states with the highest number of drug deaths like New Hampshire will receive larger portions of it.
“What we wanted and what we were able to pass in the bill was a formula focused on the need,” said Congresswoman Annie Kuster. “It’s critically important these resources are directed to the communities most hardest hit.”
Monitor stories this year explored little-known but serious offshoots of the drug crisis.
For instance, New England is seeing a spike in organ donations from young drug overdose victims.
From 2000 to 2015, the number of New England organ donors who died from drug intoxication rose from 7 to 58.
Those numbers also rose nationally, from 66 in 2000 to 848 in 2015.
“It does seem to go hand in hand with the drug overdoses,” said Helen Nelson, Senior Vice President of Organ Donation Services at the New England Organ Bank. “It’s definitely something we’ve seen jump since 2012. It’s a huge jump.”
However, Nelson and others said the one silver lining is that families who donate know that their loved one’s organs are being used to save another life.
“Once the tragedy has occurred, they and their families can elect to proceed with the gift of life,”said Dr. David Axelrod, a surgeon at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon who heads the hospital’s transplantation unit.
“That is for many families to feel there’s some sense of purpose in an otherwise very tragic event.”
Though death is the most serious outcome from an overdose, a Monitor investigation found that brain injury is another serious and often overlooked consequence.
After someone overdoses, it only takes three minutes without a steady flow of oxygen for brain damage to occur.
Nearly 4,000 people in New Hampshire were revived with the overdose reversal drug Narcan during 2014 and 2015.
But even some of the fastest response times in New Hampshire’s cities can take longer than three minutes, and even longer in rural areas.
(Ella Nilsen can be reached at 369-3322, enilsen@cmonitor.com or on Twitter @ella_nilsen.)