Dozens More Overdose; What’s In That K2?

The first five people who overdosed on drugs in downtown New Haven Thursday morning did not require Narcan to be revived — continuing a mystery facing the city as bodies drop on the Green.

Emergency workers noticed a blunt by the bench where the day’s #4 and #5 victims — a man and a woman — were found lying on a bench near Church Street around 10:45 a.m. with their eyes rolled back.

That meant that as in the 77 overdose cases reported during a nationally followed ​“mass incident” on Wednesday, they were believed to have been smoking some form of K2, a synthetic cannabinoid that comes in many forms.

But the medics did not administer Narcan, because the victims were able to speak. They were not showing signs of having overdosed from opiates, which would normally require medics to spray Narcan to revive them.

The police Wednesday arrested a 37-year-old man believed to have some role in spreading a bad batch of K2, leading to the waves of overdoses. But it’s not clear what was in the K2 to create the largest single-day public health crisis since the Green has become a regional magnet for opioid and other drug abusers. (No one has died from the overdoses, unlike when three people died in 2016 from a batch of fentanyl that caused 17 people total to overdose citywide.) After 77 overdoses on Wednesday, another 27 were reported, mostly on the Green, on Thursday by 6 p.m.; 14 were tied to K2. No one affected has died.

The state rushed extra supplies of Narcan to the Green during Wednesday’s waves of overdoses. And yet only five or six times did medics bother using it, and the Narcan did not take effect, said Rick Fontana, the city’s emergency management chief.

But later at the hospital, some victims did respond to higher doses of Narcan administrated intravenously, rather than nasally, as medics do on the scene. That led officials to theorize that the K2 must have been laced with fentanyl.

The federal Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) tested a sample of K2 and found no traces of fentanyl or other opiates. ​“A few” of the victims brought to Yale-New Haven Hospital did test positive for having opiates in their bloodstream, according to Fontana.

Two Yale-New Haven doctors who dealt with the overdose victims — Andrew Ulrich, vice-president of operations for emergency medicine; and Sandy Bogucki, the emergency services director — said that the victims largely displayed different, shorter-lasting symptoms than those associated with opiate cases. They ​“dropped almost instantly” from the K2, but then also recovered rapidly. They left the hospital soon after being brought in, in some cases to return right to the Green for another high.

So as the pharmacological mystery deepened — and people in New Haven and beyond debated how to tackle the festering public-space and public-health issues underlying Wednesday’s crisis — firefighters and AMR ambulance crews and cops were back on the Green attending to victims like the man and the woman on the bench Thursday morning.

“The Worst Batch Ever”

Kenneth Driffin was handing out water bottles and taking officials’ phone numbers in a notebook as he watched the crews work. Driffin has worked with homeless and street addicts in New Haven for years. (Read about his work here.) Thursday he said he is planning a public forum on K2 to which he hopes to convince officials to attend.

“I think overall with the K2, everyone’s using it nationally. New Haven got a black eye because we got the worst batch ever. Whatever they’re putting in it, people are dropping,” Driffin said. ​“That’s serious!”

He noted that some users, alerted to the overdoses, are coming to the Green looking to chase that potent high.

“Everyone needs to come together form the bottom to the top to talk about a solution to address this crisis,” he said.

The scene was nothing like the morning before, when 22 victims were treated in just four hours. The intensity of Wednesday’s wave appeared to be dissipating. But the public outcry and call for solutions to an ongoing problem — a constant drug market on the Green fueled by addicts who gravitate to New Haven and the APT Foundation methadone clinic from all over the state, as far east as Willimantic and as far west as Waterbury — was just beginning.

Fasano: Harp Must ​“Act Swiftly”

Even suburban politicians were entering the fray. North Haven’s Len Fasano, the Republican leader of the State Senate, issued a press release Thursday morning blaming the city for allowing the Green to deteriorate to the point that so many overdoses would occur.

Fasano’s statement follows:

“What happened in New Haven yesterday was disturbing and heartbreaking. It speaks to a painful and ugly reality about drug abuse we have to work together to combat. It also speaks to a city that has allowed one of its primary community centers, the New Haven Green, to deteriorate to the point where it is no longer an attraction for families or economic development, but a place of despair. The Green is just steps away from City Hall, and town officials know drug use on the Green was not limited to just what happened yesterday. There is a known problem there that occurs every day and has not been addressed. People are suffering and those who need help have been ignored. It is my hope that yesterday will be a wakeup call to the mayor’s administration about a problem they can no longer turn a blind eye to. We need to proactively treat drug addiction with proper social services and provide necessary shelter. We also need a united effort to clean up the Green, to make New Haven a strong city, and we need a criminal investigation into how this drug came to the Green unlike anything New Haven has ever seen before. 

“New Haven should be a place of hope. From world-renowned medicine and education opportunities to great businesses, history and community pride, our city has so much to offer. I love New Haven and what happened yesterday not only raises moral questions and is scary to our residents, but it is a deterrent to people coming here and staying here. Mayor Harp’s administration needs to act swiftly and decisively to take control over the problems that have festered on the New Haven Green and surrounding areas to prevent the Elm City from becoming a ghost town.”

Mayor Toni Harp was huddling with aides Thursday morning in preparation for an expected press conference outlining her response to the crisis. She has previously criticized the APT Foundation for not taking more responsibility for actions of its clients in town, and she has called for the state to allow doctors to administer methadone at their offices rather than have dozens or more addicts line up every day outside big institutions. Click here to read about that. Meanwhile, APT has hired extra-duty cops to patrol the area around its Congress Avenue clinic.