Drug Abuse and Drug Rehab in Clearwater, Florida

In Florida as well as other American states, it’s vital for those who become addicted to drugs or alcohol to have access to drug rehab programs that can help them recover their sobriety. Within easy driving distance from Clearwater, there are nearly 50 drug rehab facilities. This gives residents in the area many choices when they need help recovering from addiction.

In other parts of Florida, there are 650 more drug rehabs, both non-profit and for-profit. In addition, there are hundreds of support groups and structured meetings to help those in recovery maintain sobriety.

In the larger metropolitan area that includes Clearwater, there are more than three million residents. Since an estimated 2.7% of Floridians are suffering from dependence or addiction to illicit drugs, this could mean that as many as 83,700 people in the area need help at a drug rehab facility.¹

Drug Abuse Trends in Florida

Since 2010, Florida law enforcement and legislators have focused on reducing the quantity of prescription drugs diverted to the illicit market. They have made significant progress reducing this problem, passing legislation that shut down the many “pill mills” located near Clearwater. However, because the illicit drug market never stays the same for long, the success in reducing diverted prescription drugs was followed by a surge in counterfeit prescription drugs, methamphetamine trafficking, and, of course, the arrival of illicitly-manufactured fentanyl.

Those people who once went from one doctor to another to obtain pills to misuse now risked their lives buying pills from a drug dealer. Nationally, more than nine million of these fake pharmaceutical products were seized by law enforcement in 2021, with many of these pills actually containing fentanyl.²

As an example of this illicit trafficking, a Florida man was arrested in 2020 for selling nearly a quarter-million fake Xanax pills through the internet. Instead of containing alprazolam, the only drug in Xanax, these pills also contained three other drugs of the benzodiazepine class: flualprazolam, etizolam and adinazolam.³

Flualprazolam is more potent than alprazolam and could have created more severe intoxication than expected by the user. Flualprazolam and adinazolam have both recently arrived on the illicit market and are not manufactured by legitimate pharmaceutical companies. Etizolam is not available in the United States, meaning that this drug trafficker obtained his materials from foreign manufacturers. Some companies label drugs like this as “research chemicals” to try to evade arrest for distributing controlled prescription drugs without a license.

Drug-Related Loss of Life in Florida

Like much of the rest of the country, Florida suffered a significant increase in loss of life due to drug overdoses between 2021 and 2022. Comparing the twelve-month periods ending in March of each year, overdose deaths jumped up by 500 over the year before, ending up at 8,362.⁴

Across Florida, the drugs causing the greatest losses were:

• Fentanyl and analogs (6,150)
• Cocaine (2,400)
• Alcohol (1,389)
• Methamphetamine and amphetamine (2,154)
• Benzodiazepines (1,152, mostly alprazolam)⁵

In Pinellas County, where Clearwater is located, overdose losses increased from 179 overdose deaths in 2015 to 546 drug-related deaths in 2020. Fentanyl has increased these losses even more.⁶

Arrests for Trafficking and Sales of Drugs in the Clearwater Area

Clearwater is included in the Central Florida High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area, a designation created to assist coordination and financing of effective drug interdiction efforts. In 2022, dozens of high-level drug traffickers and dealers in this area have been taken out of circulation and millions of dollars of drugs have been seized and destroyed. While it’s good for drug dealers to be jailed, unfortunately, there are always other individuals ready to take their places.

Just a few miles from Clearwater, a coalition of law enforcement agencies arrested 85 people and seized millions of dollars worth of drugs. The drugs seized provided a profile of the most commonly abused drugs in the Tampa Bay-St. Petersburg-Clearwater area.⁷

• 268 pounds of methamphetamine (more than $9 million street value)
• 31 pounds of cocaine (more than $1.4 million street value)
• 180 pounds of cannabis (more than $1.6 million street value)
• 3.4 pounds of MDMA (ecstasy)
• 6.8 ounces of fentanyl
• 68 alprazolam (Xanax) pills
• 173 oxycodone pills

Perhaps 6.8 ounces of fentanyl doesn’t sound like much, but it only takes two milligrams of fentanyl to kill a person who is not accustomed to consuming this drug. Therefore, 6.8 ounces could be a fatal dose to more than 95,000 people.

In another drug arrest case in the area, one drug trafficker said about his customers, “If they can survive the high, I will always have a paycheck.” He had been arrested for trafficking more than a half-pound of fentanyl and concealing the overdose death of one person he supplied with drugs who died in his hotel room.⁸

A Problem in Desperate Need of a Solution

Ask any family with an addicted loved one and you will hear their desperation to find a good solution for their loved one. The choices these families make will vary, depending on their needs. They may choose a long-term residential rehab for their loved one, a type of rehab often associated with the best success. Other families may select short-term drug rehab or outpatient treatment.

An individual who is highly motivated to recover and who has not yet lost their social and self-examination skills may benefit from support groups, community Twelve Step programs or a community or charity-run residential program called a therapeutic community.

What is undeniable is that there must be help for those who are addicted. In many cases, their motivation to recover must come from the outside—the spouse, parents, employer, and even children often must apply enough pressure to get the addicted person to begin the journey back to sobriety.

A family who has been through this knows—whatever it takes, that journey may save their loved one’s life.

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