Give Addicts Narcan? Or ​“Clean Heroin”?

Instead of giving addicts Narcan after they overdose, as 16 people did in one day in New Haven recently, the government should give them ​“clean” drugs that won’t kill them, argues a federal drug warrior turned reformer.

The reformer, Sylvester Salcedo, made the argument during an appearance on WNHH radio’s ​“Dateline New Haven” program.

Salcedo — local attorney, founder of an advocacy group called the Connecticut Heroin Users Union, and a 2012 candidate for the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate — said he used to help build criminal cases against drug dealers as a naval intelligence officer assigned to a federal task force. Then he changed his mind about the War on Drugs. He saw it leading to unnecessary deaths and wasting the public’s money rather than helping people get better.

Now he’s calling to legalize drugs like heroin and cocaine, which the state would regulate and distribute to addicts along with help for them to kick their habits, making sure they don’t fall prey to deadly adulterated product.

“I would go right to Colombia. I would say, ​‘sell me ten kilos of your best powdered … cocaine or heroin. Let me send it through Fed Ex,’” he said.

On ​“Dateline New Haven,” Salcedo criticized Gov. Dannel P. Malloy for ordering 7,000 doses of Narcan to help first responders in the state after a batch of fentanyl-laced drugs (which turned out to be cocaine, not heroin) sold in New Haven on June 23 caused 16 people to overdose, three of them fatally, within 16 hours.

First responders and elected officials throughout the state have pressed for more federal money to stock up on Narcan.

“Narcan, in my view, medicallly speaking, yes it works. Yes, it saves lives,” Salcedo said. ​“But what Gov. Malloy is doing is, he’s carpet-bombing Connecticut with Narcan.

“If these people [who overdosed in New Haven] were members of a drug club, they could just come to our clinic each day. We would know who they are. We would know what they are dependent on. We would be able to treat them with TEA rather than have them be picked up by a $400 ambulance ride” and revived with Narcan selling for for $170 or so a dose.

Salcedo coined the TEA acronym for his organization’s approach to working with addicts: tolerance, empathy and acceptance. He argued that addicts can lead ​“productive full lives as long as you don’t force them into the underworld…. So instead of pressing with the War on Drugs, which is trying to tell people who become dependent or addicted to heroin, ​‘get clean or go to jail,’ accept them for where they are in their lives” and help them.

Salcedo’s Heroin Users Union advocates for diverting state money intended for arresting drug dealers and users away from that activity, using it instead for treatment programs for sobriety or maintenance; casting heroin addiction as ​“an illness/disability, not criminal behavior”; and convincing ​“state decision-makers to consider creating drug-tolerant zones in each county.” (Ithaca, N.Y. has been working on such an idea.)

These days, the new government running the Philippines is offering its citizens anything but TEA in prosecuting the work on drugs.

President Rodrigo Duterte has unleashed soldiers and vigilante mobs to kill near an estimated 1,800 drug suspects over the past two months and frightened some 600,000 other people — including government officials pleading their innocence — to turn themselves in as supposed drug offenders or dealers. Helping addicts get treatment is reportedly not part of the program.

Yet Salcedo — the Minnesota-born son of a Filipino father and FiIipino-Chinese mother; he lived in the Philippines from ages 2 through 12 — hesitated to criticize that campaign during his WNHH appearance.

Duterte, he said, is trying to prevent the Philippines from becoming a ​“narco-state” like Colombia. His approach is popular in the country. ​“I think for the Philippines, he’s doing the right thing.”

Yes, due process has been ​“trampled on,” and, at least in the United States legalization would make more sense, Salcedo said. But he said Americans ​“should not dictate to the rest of the world” about how to run their societies.

Click on or download the above sound file to hear the full interview with Salcedo on WNHH radio’s ​“Dateline New Haven.” The first half of the program focuses on the current drug war in the Philippines; the second half, Salcedo’s ideas for drug legalization and treatment in Connecticut.