WATERBURY – We're just over four months into 2016, and Waterbury has now surpassed the total number of heroin-related deaths for all of last year.
An overdose death Friday morning pushed the total of such fatalities to 18 this year. In 2015, the city experienced 17.
“We need to pay more attention to this because it's taking lives from our students,” said Madeline Nolan, who teaches substance abuse prevention in Waterbury schools, where opiates, including pain killers, are discussed often.
Nolan is part of a regional opioid work group that met in City Hall Friday afternoon. Senator Chris Murphy told the group he is proposing a bill to release nearly $1 billion in emergency federal funding to address this epidemic.
On Monday, Waterbury police, in conjunction with state and federal agencies, conducted Operation Stamp Out, which used arrest warrants in targeting what cops described as mid-level drug dealers. So far, 44 arrests were made, 37 related to the sale of heroin.
Monday's raids, conducted by 12 teams of officers, netted 2,300 bags of heroin and almost $25,000 in cash. And, Police Chief Vernon Riddick has a message for the couple of dozen additional targets still out there: “Watch out. We're still coming.”
Murphy argues if six Ebola cases led Congress to appropriate $4 billion in emergency funding two years ago, then this heroin funding request should be a shoe-in.
“Just here in Connecticut, we had 700 people die from opioid overdoses in this last year,” Murphy said, adding that the state is on pace to double that number this year.