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COCONINO COUNTY — 2,091 deaths were reported to the Ventura County Medical Examiner’s Office during the 2022 calendar year. Jurisdiction was accepted for 1090 of these deaths, requiring further investigation and certification. Postmortem examinations were performed on 799 cases. Of the cases investigated, 278 deaths were due to overdose with medications, alcohol and or illicit drugs.
Of the 278 overdose deaths, 253 were accidents, 18 were suicides and seven deaths were of undetermined manner. Of these overdose deaths, men accounted for 206 deaths (74%) and women accounted for 72 deaths (26%).
Multiple drugs or medications may be involved in one case; therefore, one should not add the numbers of individual substances. The same case may be represented multiple times with different drugs or drug categories. Overdose by city reflects the location of injury (overdose). In some cases, the location of death is different than the city of injury because of transport to a medical facility prior to death.
Noteworthy trends:
- 1) The total number of overdoses in 2022 represent a 4% decrease compared to 2021.
- 2) The number of fentanyl related overdoses increased by 10% compared to the previous year.
- 3) While methamphetamine related overdoses increased in 2022, 66% of these deaths also involved
fentanyl.
- 4) The highest number of overdose deaths in 2022 were between ages 31 to 40 years (68 deaths).
The highest number of fentanyl overdose deaths were between ages 31 and 50 (102 deaths).