Graph from the National Institute on Drug Abuse. This graph is opioid only — and does not include pandemic numbers.
ANSONIA — A $50,000 federal grant is being used in the effort to stem the tide of opioid overdoses happening in Ansonia, Derby and Shelton.
The Alliance for Prevention & Wellness, a program of BHcare in Ansonia, is using the money for everything from training peer educators in local high schools to forming a monthly community task force to trade information. The grant will also fund efforts to educate the Valley on the proper disposal of prescription pills.
The $50,000 five-year grant comes from the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act (CARA), a 2016 federal law created to combat the scourge of opioid addiction that had enveloped the United States.
The local dollars are being used specifically to target three communities: Ansonia, Derby, and Shelton.
Ansonia and Derby had higher than average opioid overdose deaths between 2014 and 2018. Shelton saw the number of fatal opioid overdoses jump 76 percent between 2018 and 2020, according to a prepared statement from the Alliance for Prevention & Wellness.
“This data provides good reason to worry about the environment in which middle and high school students in the three towns are growing to adulthood,” said Pam Mautte, the long-time director of the Alliance for Prevention and Wellness.
In September, the grant was used to start a peer education program at Ansonia High School.
“There were seven students who were trained in opioid use disorder and prevention, and what overdose is,” said Lorrie McFarland, a prevention coordinator with the Alliance for Prevention and Wellness.
The students, once trained, then went to younger grades to address health classes about the dangers of opioids, which are often found in people’s homes as prescription medicine. The program is also expected to start at Derby High School, McFarland said.
In addition, a Valley Opioid Task Force is meeting once a month at the Echo Hose Ambulance Training Center, 430 Coram Ave. in Shelton. Due to COVID-19, the meetings are hybrid — meaning people can attend in-person or through Zoom.
McFarland said she is looking for more people from Ansonia, Derby and Shelton to get involved with the task force. Call McFarland with questions at (203) 736‑8566 ext. 1457 or email her at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) for more information.
The next meeting is 1:30 p.m. Tuesday, Dec. 1. If you want to watch using Zoom, use this link to register: https://bhcare-org.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJYrdu6trDMpEtDm20eYrUEl4DOTsm7xPvYw
According to data from the Connecticut Department of Health, there were 24 drug overdoses in the Naugatuck Valley (Naugatuck to Shelton) in 2015. There were 56 in 2020. In all, 301 people died in the Valley from overdoses in that period, including 69 Shelton residents, 38 Derby residents, and 54 Ansonia residents.
Thirteen of those 301 deaths were people between the ages of 15 and 24 — and six of those overdoses happened in 2020 and 2021.
Many people — and some Connecticut-based businesses — made lots of money off the so-called “opioid crisis” that emerged in the 1990s and continues today.
From 2013 until 2015, Derby was home to the Comprehensive Pain and Headache Treatment Center, a pain clinic that former employee Heather Alfonso said “probably could very well have been described as a pill mill,” in a 2020 interview with “Frontline,” a PBS news magazine show.
Alfonso, a mother of five, took kickbacks to the tune of $83,000 to prescribe a fentanyl-based drug made by Insys, a notoriously corrupt pharmaceutical company that bribed healthcare workers across the U.S. to inflate drug sales.
Alfonso cooperated with the federal government’s investigation into Insys and, in 2019, was sentenced to three years probation. John N. Kapoor, the company’s founder, is serving a five-year federal prison sentence.
Stamford-based Perdue Pharma, manufacturers of the much-abused pain killer OxyContin, is generally credited with kicking off America’s opioid addiction into overdrive. The company pled guilty to three felonies in 2020, but its top-level owners have largely avoided individual consequences.
The story behind Purdue Pharma’s role in the crisis was recently chronicled in the documentary “The Crime of the Century,” and the tale is being told in the Hulu dramatic series “Dopesick.”
In 2016, Valley cops started issuing warnings about “bad batches” of heroin circulating. Turns out the heroin was mixed with fentanyl, and the overdoses from it have become commonplace.
Pills are still very much being abused in the Valley, according to McFarland, the prevention coordinator with the Alliance for Prevention and Wellness in Ansonia.
But now the pills are counterfeit — essentially made at home by dealers. The danger is tremendous.
“What’s changed is now we have pills that are manufactured to look like the real thing, but contain large amounts of fentanyl and not the actual prescription formulation. There might be Oxycodone on the street that looks like Oxycodone, with the same color and the same markings — but it contains no Oxycodone. It’s pure fentanyl. Or Xanax, which is desirable by our younger population. You can purchase it on the black market but it can be mixed with fentanyl. What’s happening in our towns is that the pill market has taken over.”
