BFHS hosts drug education event as statewide overdose deaths decline

A provisional CDC report released last week shows that Idaho experienced a statewide decrease in drug overdose deaths by 5.21 percent in 2024. 

“The preliminary federal data documenting the first decrease in overdose deaths in five years is definitely a bit of rare, good news,” Marianne King, director of the Idaho Office of Drug Policy, told the Herald. “We believe it is a combination of years of efforts by many partners across the prevention, intervention, treatment, and recovery continuum of care to raise awareness around substance abuse in general and fentanyl specifically.” 

Among the partners involved in the fight for awareness is the Idaho Fentanyl Education Program, which held an event at Bonners Ferry High School Wednesday night to educate students on the dangers of drug use. The presentation, a collaboration between state and local law enforcement, featured a screening of the short documentary “Dead on Arrival” by Dominic Tierno, Idahoan filmmaker and IFEP co-coordinator, as well as a slideshow highlighting state and national overdose statistics.  

“We are really trying to get the word out,” said IFEP Co-coordinator John Kempf, a former Idaho State Police district commander based in Cour d’Alene who specialized in narcotics. “I do believe that with the education we provide, these kids are smart enough to realize how they are being exploited.” 

IFEP is a state-funded program that holds events at three or four schools a week. Other awareness efforts in Idaho include Governor Brad Little’s Esto Perpetua Initiative in 2022 to combat substance abuse, the statewide Fentanyl Takes All awareness campaign, and the investment of Opioid Settlement Funds at the state, regional, and local levels that have increased the implementation of proven prevention strategies. 

“I think it is important to note that while any declines in the numbers of overdose fatalities offer hope, Idahoans continue to lose friends, family members, colleagues, and neighbors,” King said. 

A local dive into the drug crisis 

Overall, local officials and clinicians agree the national uptick in potent drug use and associated overdose deaths over the last five years has not left as severe a mark on Boundary County as it has across the state and the nation. But the local drug problem remains ongoing and ever-changing. 

Cannabis that once came from the northern border and local grow operations in the 1990s and early 2000s now often enters the county by way of neighboring states.

Meth-related arrests in Boundary County fluctuate widely from year to year, but broader trends show that arrests over the last 20 years have been on the decline, according to the Idaho State Police database.  

The Boundary County Undersheriff Rich Stephens said that meth has been gradually replaced by the increasing presence of heroin and fentanyl in the black market in recent years. 

“I wouldn’t go so far as to say it’s an epidemic like it’s portrayed in the media,” Stephens said. “But it is a problem with serious consequences.” 

Boundary County ranks 22 out of 44 in drug and alcohol arrest rate averaged over the last 10 years among Idaho counties, placing it right at the 50th percentile, according to the ISP database. But because of drug criminalization laws in Idaho, such crimes tend to be the ones that push the local jail to its capacity. 

Over half of the inmates in the Boundary County Jail have been convicted of at least one drug-related felony. 20 percent of those inmates have been caught with fentanyl but also had other drug-related felonies. In 2022, the last year Boundary County reported to the state its narcotics arrests – which include but is not limited to fentanyl –  only as much as 7 percent of drug-related arrests in the county involved fentanyl. That is far below the statewide average of 20 percent. 

Such data indicates that Boundary County is less at risk than most regions in the state, considering over half of Idaho’s overdose deaths in 2023 came from fentanyl. 

The synthetic opioid, even in trace amounts, is rarely found in patient samples tested at Rawlins Community Counseling in Bonners Ferry, said Jeremy Gau, mental health and addictions therapist. 

Yet at Idaho’s more urban drug recovery centers, most patients unexpectedly test positive for fentanyl because it was laced into the drugs they became addicted to, said Kempf. He said that drugs secretly laced with fentanyl are less expensive, more addictive and highly dangerous. Almost 60 percent of national overdose deaths involve fentanyl, either on its own or mixed in with other drugs, according to the CDC. 

Gau said that fentanyl has not pervaded Boundary County due in part to the region’s isolation. But the synthetic opioid has made its way to Bonners Ferry from Spokane before, according to court documents. 

The provisional CDC report released last week shows that four states bordering Idaho – Washington, Oregon, Nevada and Utah – all had a rise in overdose deaths last year. Only one other state in the country had an increase in OD deaths.  

Idaho’s OD death decrease last year in a region of the nation that has been particularly challenged shows how events like the one held at BFHS Wednesday night have a positive effect on the health and safety of Boundary County and other regions throughout Idaho.