The feds have to say yes. We need to ask them.
So said Mayor Toni Harp about one of her ideas for addressing New Haven’s challenges in dealing with drug abuse.
The idea: Allow doctors to dispense methadone from their offices to individual clients.
Harp first raised the idea a year ago when emergency crews transported people to the hospital from the New Haven Green 120 times in three days after they were poisoned by a bad batch of the drug K2. That incident prompted soul-searching and a slew of proposals from a mayoral task force for addressing poisoning, overdoses, and illegal drug use in public spaces.
Harp floated the individual-doctor-dispensing idea in response to problems caused by the concentration of methadone clients from all over the state at the APT Foundation clinic on Congress Avenue.
“The time has come,” Harp said during her latest appearance on WNHH FM’s “Mayor Monday” program. “People are trained. They should be able to” dispense from their offices, avoiding the need for people struggling with addiction to travel far and congregate at one location for hours.
“We’ve really ghettoized the treatment of opioid addictions” with the current model, she said.
Since suggesting the idea, Harp said, she has learned that the state would need a federal waiver to allow New Haven to have qualified doctors dispense methadone from their offices. She said she hopes to build public support for the state Medicaid office to pursue such a waiver from the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration to allow New Haven to pilot an experiment that would test the idea for communities across the nation.
Fire Chief John Alston Jr., who joined Harp on this edition of “Mayor Monday,” spoke of how the city has pioneered the use of data-reliant “heat maps” in the wake of the Green poisonings to track each overdose and poisoning, to ascertain where in town they occur and what drugs are involved. The data has recently shown a spike in heroin overdoses (rather than fentanyl overdoses), he said. They’ve occurred in neighborhoods citywide, but particularly on the Green and in the Hill and Fair Haven.
Drone Education, Strategy Promoted
NHFD
Drone’s-eye view of April collapse at the Audubon Square construction site, which the NHFD used in responding.
Also on the “Mayor Monday” program, Chief Alston praised a suggestion by Hill alder candidate Germano Kimbro to teach kids in school how to operate drones, as part of a broader strategy of preparing them for 21st century jobs.
Alston said he has been working on increasing his department’s use of drones in the interest of public safety. He noted how drone footage helped the NHFD identify an impending roof collapse at the old brewery complex on Ferry Street. In April the footage helped the department see where a partial collapse had begun at the construction site for the Audubon Square development.
Drones are also helping the fire department monitor big crowds to make sure emergency vehicles can reach potential medical calls. During concerts on the Green, drone footage has helped identify blocked pathways, which personnel on the ground can then clear of, say, lawn chairs. Or if a circle of people in a crowd forms around someone who has fallen, drones can often spot the scene when firefighters on the ground cannot.
Meanwhile, Alston said, the NHFD and police department are working with Southern Connecticut State University, which has a program specializing in drone technology, to come up with both an overall strategy for and specific ways the departments can increase the use of drones to maintain public safety.
Mayor Harp endorsed the idea of the NHFD using drones to identify public-safety problems and for kids to learn about new technology. But she also cautioned against an overreliance on drones in ways that could compromise people’s privacy by identifying innocent people who haven’t been proved to have committed a crime. She has also expressed reservations about using drones to identify dirt-bike riders; drones coming close to young, reckless riders may cause them to crash, she said.
“I worry about privacy,” she said. “We’ve got to be careful” in crafting strategy. Working closely with experts at SCSU “is one way” to do that, she said.
WNHH’s “Mayor Monday” is made possible with the support of Gateway Community College and Berchem Moses P.C.
I applaud the NHI for interviewing the Mayor and other City officials. A healthy democracy requires we question our elected leaders.
Therefore, in an effort to raise awareness about this year's very important November election, and bring some transparency to where our Alders (and their challengers) stand on important issues, I have decided to create an Alder Survey.
Some of the questions to be included are the following:
Whom do you support for Mayor?
Will you commit to capping, at the cost of inflation, any future tax increases?
Are you up to date with all your personal City tax payments?
We are asking the public to submit questions of the variety that supports Yes/No, and Multiple Choice responses.
We already have at least 10 Alders and Challengers who have committed to participating in the Survey. Please send us your questions by this Friday August 23rd at 5:00 PM so we can include them in the Survey. This is your chance to question (from the comfort of your keyboard) the approximately 40 people running for Alder in 2019. People submitting questions will remain anonymous.
You may send your questions to [email protected]
Thank you,
Dennis Serfilippi
P.S. I'm hoping for a 'two part' question from THREE-FIFTHS