The opioid addiction crisis that has consumed America for the last decade is now an epidemic, and one local physician says he has never seen anything like it in his 30-plus years of practicing medicine.

“This is a unique epidemic and one that I’ve never seen explode like this,” Dr. Randy Easterling said. “I worked through the meth crisis and the crack crisis and have never seen anything like this.”

Easterling, who is on the governor’s Opioid and Heroin Study Task Force, hardly saw a heroin addiction patient a few year’s ago. He has “retired” as a family practice physician at River Region and is now primarily focusing on addicts. He is currently treating more than 200 patients at his facility in Vicksburg.

“This epidemic has taken the largest toll on Mississippi and America as a whole than any addiction I’ve seen in the past,” Easterling said. “It is the most addictive drug I’ve ever dealt with.”

He said the crisis began just over a decade ago when the government and pharmaceutical companies placed an emphasis on treating acute chronic pain. Painkillers were sold to the medical community as being non-addictive.

“We didn’t know at the time they were highly addictive,” Easterling said.

Patients were asked if they were leaving the hospital pain-free and the hospitals, who were rated pain-free facilities, received more federal funding. As a result, physicians were pressured from hospitals to prescribe painkillers for their patients.

Mississippi had the highest overdose death rate in the state’s history in 2016 with 211, according to state Bureau of Narcotics Director John Dowdy. Easterling said Mississippi has surpassed that number with 225.

Easterling is concerned there’s an even more dangerous drug on the rise than heroin. Fentanyl, which is sold in time-released skin patches to cancer patients suffering with pain, is 50 times stronger than heroin.

He said addicts abuse the patches by melting them and now Mexican cartels are lacing heroin with fentanyl, mainly because the painkiller is cheaper to produce than heroin.

“The fentanyl is being made in China so you don’t know what you’re getting,” Easterling said. “Then it’s being mixed with heroin that could have been cut with sawdust. You don’t know where it’s from and people are dying.”

Deaths nationwide from fentanyl have increased 75 percent this year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Among those was legendary entertainer Prince.

For the first time nationally, heroin deaths have surpassed gun homicides, according to the CDC. In Mississippi, people being treated for heroin addiction has gone from 99 three years ago to 306. And the number of heroin-related deaths has shot up from one in 2011 to 35 in 2015.

Easterling said Mississippi still has not gotten control of painkiller prescriptions, ranking in the Top 10 since 2012, but is trending downward.

“I think we’re going in the right direction with cutting back on the number of pain pills being prescribed,” Easterling said.

He said opioids are not exclusive to one demographic.

“This addiction is also taking a toll on the middle class,” Easterling said. “We’re treating house wives and corporate executives. This is an equal opportunity disease.”

Easterling became associated with Pathway Healthcare a couple months ago and said the medical treatment coupled with counseling procedures are working. He said rarely is there a patient with just one addiction. Many with mental illness with try to treat their disease with opioids.

He said his facility has seen patients from all areas of Mississippi.

“It has shown to be very successful. I’m excited with what we’re doing at Pathways.

“We treat patients, not addicts,” Easterling said. “They have a disease of addiction.”