05 Jun 5 died of overdoses in 15 hours, Hartford police say | National
HARTFORD, Conn. — Hartford police said Tuesday that five people died from overdoses in the city within a 15-hour period, and that the number of overdose deaths this year already exceeds last year’s total by 16.
Police suspect fentanyl caused the overdose deaths, Lt. Paul Cicero said. The powerful, synthetic opioid is often mixed with other illegal drugs in powder and pill form, so people don’t always realize what they are ingesting. A few weeks ago, two people died after taking pills they thought were a designer drug like ecstasy, he said.
The capital city has already topped last year’s rate of fatal overdoses with 38 deaths, Cicero said. In 2018, 22 people died of overdoses.
Last year, national health officials reported that opioid deaths were starting to plateau, and Connecticut’s Department of Health said in February that emergency visits for opioid overdoses had stabilized in 2018.
Connecticut also saw 21 fewer drug deaths last year, from 1,038 in 2017 to 1,017 in 2018.
That isn’t the full story, says Mark Jenkins, who runs the Greater Hartford Harm Reduction Coalition. Increased availability of naloxone, the overdose-reversing drug, flattened the trend in deadly overdoses even as the number of total overdoses continued to climb.
“We’re nowhere near being out of the water,” said Mark Jenkins, who runs the Greater Hartford Harm Reduction Coalition. “Our public health response has still not met the need to address this as we have to.”
And one drug trend did rise last year — the presence of fentanyl in overdoses. In 2018, three-quarters of all drug deaths involved fentanyl, up from 65% in 2017. The combination of fentanyl and cocaine in particular was present in 270 deaths last year, up from 220 cases in 2017, and just two in 2012.
Fentanyl is a painkiller like morphine but 50-100% more potent, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse. Police also see the drug mixed with heroin and crack cocaine, Cicero said.
Detectives investigate the deaths the way they would a homicide, he said. They talk to survivors, examine the drugs’ packaging and try to figure out where the deadly substance came from.
(Rebecca Lurye contributed to this report.)
©2019 The Hartford Courant (Hartford, Conn.)
PHOTO (for help with images, contact 312-222-4194): Fentanyl
Copyright 2019 Tribune Content Agency.
[ad_2]
Source link
No Comments