Ventura County Medical Examiner’s Office 2018 Overdose Report

VENTURA COUNTY — The Ventura County Medical Examiner’s Office this week released its 2018 Overdose Report:

1,563 deaths were reported to the Ventura County Medical Examiner’s Office during calendar year 2018. Jurisdiction was accepted for 806 of these deaths, requiring further investigation and certification. Postmortem examinations were performed on 626 cases. Of the cases investigated, 170 deaths were due to medications, alcohol and or illicit drugs.

Of the 170 deaths, 156 were accidents, 13 were suicide and one death was undetermined. Of the overdose deaths, men accounted for 112 deaths (65.7%) and women accounted for 58 deaths (34.3%).

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 by different drugs or drug categories. Deaths by city are based on the location of death which may not be the same location as where the overdose occurred.

Click here for the entire report