PORTLAND, Ore. — Portland police say 10 children have overdosed on drugs since mid-June and nine of those are suspected fentanyl overdoses. In five of the 10 cases, the children died.
"One dead kid is one dead kid too many," said Portland Police Capt. Jake Jensen during a Thursday press briefing.
These cases reveal a sharp increase in overdoses involving children. In the past three years combined, 2020, 2021 and 2022, PPB investigated a total of nine cases.
"These numbers are astronomical and absolutely completely unacceptable," Capt. Jensen said.
The suspected overdoses involved children ranging from age 1 to age 17, including seven cases under the age of 5.
"We're all going to do the best we possibly can to save these kids' lives, but that's not enough. We've got to go upstream to make it so they can't get to these drugs in the first place," Capt. Jensen said.
Police said the cases are all suspected overdoses and have not been confirmed by the medical examiner's office. While they suspect nine involve fentanyl, one was due to THC.
Jensen said that police are also seeing a rise in adult overdoses, which are still the vast majority.
"Those numbers correlate with what we're seeing as a broader trend here in the Portland community, where year to date we’ve had over 240 overdose deaths and last year in the entire year we had 158 overdose deaths," Jensen explained.
Those numbers show that 2023 is on track to be another record-breaking year when it comes to overdose deaths. Jensen said that it's time for the community to make a change.
"If you don’t like what you see, I would encourage you to talk to the policymakers and the senior leaders that execute those policy decisions about what you want to see in the city and how we can achieve that," he said.
Here are the suspected overdose cases involving children in the past two-plus months reported by PPB. Police clarified that the dates included in this list are from when PPB initiated an investigation, not necessarily the day the overdose happened:
- June 15 – 1-year-old suspected fentanyl OD, victim survived
- June 19 – 2-year-old suspected fentanyl OD, victim is deceased
- June 25 – 4-year-old suspected fentanyl OD, victim survived
- July 19 – 1-year-old suspected THC OD, victim survived
- Aug. 10 – 15-year-old suspected fentanyl OD, victim is deceased
- Aug. 24 – 1-year-old suspected fentanyl OD, victim is deceased
- Aug. 26 – 17-year-old suspected fentanyl OD, victim survived
- Sept. 14 – 5-year-old suspected fentanyl OD, victim is deceased
- Sept. 20 – 15-year-old suspected fentanyl OD, victim is deceased
- Sept. 22 – 15-month-old suspected fentanyl OD, victim survived