BETHLEHEM TWP., Pa. — Northampton County's Fake is Real opioid overdose prevention campaign, started a year ago, has handed out more than 1,300 doses of naloxone, a medication used to reverse the effects of opioids.
The program also has trained more than 200 people — from doctors and plumbers to bail bondsmen and church members — on how to administer the drug.
And that has helped lead to a sharp drop in Northampton County’s overdose deaths last year, officials said.
Those details were released as officials celebrated Fake is Real's first birthday with a recap of its first year and a preview of its plans.
“It's been much of our effort over this last year to educate, especially people in the 18- to 35-year-old cohort, about the dangers of the poisoning that you can experience from fentanyl-adulterated pills that you buy on the street.”Northampton County Executive Lamont McClure
“When we sued the opioid manufacturers who conspired to poison and kill so many of our fellow citizens, including so many young people... we came up with an aggressive plan,” said County Executive Lamont McClure.
“It's been much of our effort over this last year to educate, especially people in the 18- to 35-year-old cohort, about the dangers of the poisoning that you can experience from fentanyl-adulterated pills that you buy on the street.”
The program's reach
The campaign consists of two main prongs: a publicity campaign surrounding the dangers of fentanyl in street drugs, especially counterfeit pills made to resemble prescription medication, and a free program distributing the overdose reversal medication naloxone.
The public education campaign, built around the website FakeIsReal.org, closely resembles U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention initiatives to publicize the dangers of fentanyl-contaminated drugs.
More than 130 agencies, organizations and businesses throughout Northampton County received Fake is Real’s education and marketing materials.
In November, officials added to the program’s arsenal medication disposal kits — plastic bags full of drug-neutralizing carbon powder — giving residents a way to safely and irreversibly get rid of unwanted prescription drugs.
The county mailed out more than 50,000 disposal bags last year to roughly a third of its residents. The remaining two-thirds will get a kit this year; it also will be available for free on the Fake is Real website.
More to come
In the year ahead, Fake is Real will install nine white news rack-style boxes stocked with free naloxone at a handful of county buildings and recovery centers to make the drug more available. A full list of the distribution sites is available here.
Additionally, the program’s website includes a new memorial to Lehigh Valley victims of fentanyl overdoses.
A mobile outreach vehicle also is on the way, officials said, and will be used to take Fake is Real’s programming on the road across the county.
“Eventually, we're going to move into the treatment phase. We're going to use this money that we have won from the opioid manufacturers to expand treatment all across Northampton County because we don't have one person to leave behind.”Northampton County Executive Lamont McClure
“Eventually, we're going to move into the treatment phase,” McClure said. "We're going to use this money that we have won from the opioid manufacturers to expand treatment all across Northampton County because we don't have one person to leave behind.”
Touting the program’s success so far, officials said state data showed a sharp drop in Northampton County’s overdose deaths last year compared with 2022, to 45 from 81.
Despite the data’s limitations — the most current figures only run through last November, and it takes three to six months for an overdose death to appear in the state’s database — it shows a larger drop in overdoses than neighboring Lehigh County saw over the same period.
A publicly available version of the same state data shows a steeper drop in Northampton County, to 26 in 2023 from 68 overdoses in 2022.
To date, Northampton County has spent $1.3 million of the $1.8 million received from settlements with opioid manufacturers. Settlement money will continue to flow to the county over the next 15 years, county Drug and Alcohol Administrator Kathy Jiorle said, totaling about $13 million.
Jiorle said her department also has set aside nearly $1 million specifically for addiction treatment.
Despite embracing naloxone, county officials said they don't plan to soon expand Fake is Real to include other evidence-based public health interventions backed by the CDC.
'Saving lives emergently — now'
Fentanyl test strips, used to quickly and cheaply test for the opioid’s presence in illicit drugs, have for years been part of anti-overdose programs in other states.
While imperfect — the strips don't show how much fentanyl is in a pill, for instance — research has shown some evidence the tests are able to detect fentanyl likely to be used and capable of changing someone's behavior.
Similarly, syringe exchange programs, which provide IV drug users with clean needles and a link to addiction treatment, are shown to prevent bloodborne illnesses such as HIV, reduce overdose deaths and increase the likelihood someone seeks treatment.
Syringe programs are strongly supported by scientific evidence and likely to be effective, according to a 2018 CDC report.
McClure said those and similar harm reduction strategies would not immediately save lives, unlike the existing Fake is Real campaign, and are therefore not a priority for the county.
"That's unfair to ask Fake is Real to get involved in something so controversial, that really is almost permissive with regard to drug use."Northampton County District Attorney Stephen Baratta
“We’re interested in saving lives emergently — now,” he said.
“We want to get people into treatment; we don't necessarily want to do anything other than that. We want to save their lives in the first instance and then get them in treatment.”
County District Attorney Stephen Baratta spoke against harm reduction measures such as supervised injection sites and syringe programs that might provide a “safe haven to use drugs,” giving the programs an uncertain-at-best future in Northampton County.
“That's unfair to ask Fake is Real to get involved in something so controversial, that really is almost permissive with regard to drug use,” he said.
“They don't want to be part of encouraging drug use at the same time they're trying to prevent it by saying come here and use your drugs.”
“My office is opposed to that.”
