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Amid Opioid Epidemic, Conn. Officials Discuss Fentanyl as Growing Problem

Nicholas Rondinone

09/22/2016

Sept. 22--Louis Ahearn had been using heroin for a couple of weeks before he died, his mother said.

Gina Mattei found her son the morning on Feb. 17 suffering from an overdose. Despite paramedics using naloxone to reverse the effects of the opioids, he went into cardiac arrest, she said.

It would prove that the 23-year-old Derby resident took a lethal amount of fentanyl, a synthetic opioid up to 50 times stronger than heroin.

On Wednesday, Mattei was joined by other families, law enforcement officials and medical professionals to discuss the opioid epidemic that continues to claim hundreds of lives.

To Ahearn, heroin was cheap and helped with pain from a tooth extraction, Mattei said. "It was less than two weeks that I knew about it," she added.

Ahearn's death was one of more than 400 overdoses during the first half of the year, many of which were caused by fentanyl and other opioids including heroin.

In the auditorium of John F. Kennedy High School, U.S. Attorney Deirdre Daly said half of the 900 or so people expected to fatally overdose in Connecticut this year will have taken fentanyl.

"Fentanyl is the new, big problem in Connecticut," Daly said. "It's different in different states, but what we're struggling with most is fentanyl. "

She said for distributors, fentanyl has proven much more lucrative. Where a kilogram of heroin could sell for about $80,000, Daly said fentanyl can bring in $1 million.

Much of it is made in China and comes into the state from Mexico, she said. Earlier this year, federal authorities seized more than 2 kilograms of the drug in a record bust.

Daly said the Drug Enforcement Administration has investigated 70 overdoses in the state since January, leading to federal charges being filed against 40 people.

Waterbury has seen the lethal toll of opioid abuse. Police Chief Vernon Riddick told the conference attendees that there have been 116 overdoses in the city this year, leaving 27 people dead.

"If you round up ... that's one in four. So if all of us had a heroin problem and you counted off ... the fourth person is someone that would be dead. We have do something."

But officials said this wasn't a problem that could just be solved with arrests.

"Along with this being a law enforcement issue, this is really a public health crisis we are facing," said Dr. Julia Perry of the Yale School of Medicine.

One part of the issue is the drugs on the streets, but Perry said the other portion is that more people are being exposed to opioids every day.

"Opioids are readily available ... that's because they are being prescribed by physicians; sometimes for good use, a lot of times, I would argue, unnecessarily," she said.