The days of a coroner simply determining the cause of death and the manner in which the person died where drugs are involved are long gone.
Doctor David Cameron, who is the Regional Supervising Coroner for the Northeast, says nowadays an autopsy report includes information like did the person have previous drug and psychiatric problems, was the person on other medications and also their employment history.
Cameron says the change is all about helping other agencies develop targeted messages toward addicts in an effort to help them get off drugs.
Cameron says what’s happened over the years is coroners have found that with deaths involving drugs, the person had a drug problem for more than five years.
“They had also been to rehab or hospital admission for opioid related problems,” he said.
Cameron says this means while the person was alive, there were many opportunities for someone to intervene and maybe save this person’s life.
“We should be able to prevent these deaths,” he said.
Cameron says in the case of the people who were autopsied, there was no one else around to see they were going more and more into a coma.
However the hope is by digging deeper into someone’s death and seeing if patterns emerge, other agencies then have tools on how to direct messages at addicts.