BDN cites fatal drug overdose statistics collected by Sorg
The Bangor Daily News cited data collected by Marcella Sorg, a University of Maine medical and forensic anthropologist, in an article about the state getting a second detox center. The state recently awarded $1,167,000 to Wellspring Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services, a residential and outpatient services program in Bangor, to start a “residential social setting detoxification center,” according to the article. Sixty people died in drug-related deaths in Maine in 2000, but by 2009, that number had increased to 179, which exceeded the number of people killed in automobile crashes in the state, according to data collected by Sorg, who analyzes overdose deaths for the state’s attorney general. There were 176 drug overdose deaths in 2013, and 208 people in Maine died by overdose in 2014. Based on the number of overdose deaths that occurred in the first half of 2016, Maine is on track to reach at least 378 deaths by the end of the year, the article states.