Baltimore County today announced the release of a new data dashboard that displays information about opioid incidents in the county.
The Opioid Overdose Data Dashboard, which tracks both fatal and nonfatal overdoses, breaks down the data by factors such as age, race, gender, and location.
The dashboard is the latest in a series of efforts by Baltimore County Executive Johnny Olszewski Jr. to increase government transparency and provide more information to the public.
“Every opioid overdose death is the tragic loss of a loved one,” Olszewski said in a statement today.
“We hope this latest dashboard not only provides residents with access to this critical information, but also informs our work and the work of community partners as we continue combatting this deadly epidemic,” he said.
Because the dashboard only reflects overdoses reported to the Baltimore County police, it likely does not reflect all overdoses that occur in the county.
In 2020, more people in Maryland died of opioid overdoses than any year on record.
According to a report by the Maryland Department of Health, there were 2518 opioid-related deaths last year.
A vast majority of the deaths were related to fentanyl, a cheap and very powerful synthetic opioid.
The number of deaths related to prescription opioids was the most ever recorded, with 453 deaths. Prescription opioid-related deaths outpaced those caused by heroin for the first time in 10 years.
The new opioid data dashboard displays overdoses reported from 2017 through 2021. Data for this year currently reports overdoses that occurred from January through September.
The dashboard will be updated quarterly.
