Paul Bass Photo
Emergency responders tend to K2 overdose victims on the Green in mid-August
With the one-year anniversary approaching of the day the world paused to watch mass overdoses happening on the New Haven Green, the Harp administration is preparing to pause for reflection.
Esther Armmand, legislative liaison for the mayor, delivered that news to the city’s Overdose Response Work Group during its regular monthly meeting at City Hall Wednesday afternoon.
Markeshia Ricks Photo
Armmand.
Armmand said the mayor is planning an event for the city and the region that brings the community together to reflect on that fateful day when nearly 100 overdoses occurred thanks to a bad batch of K2 (synthetic marijuana) last August. In addition to reflection, the event would dive deep into how that mass overdose changed the city, what has been done to prevent further such overdoses, and what the city and the region might move forward in combating the problem of addiction.
“This would be a way to bring the community into the conversation,” Armmand said.
When that bad batch of K2 (synthetic marijuana) hit New Haven last August, the city saw around 120 overdose-related medical trips over the course of a three-day period. Those trips were the result of people being poisoned multiple times after they were treated and released from the hospital only to return to smoking from the same batch of K2.
Muley.
City Community Services Administrator Dakibu Muley said the event will highlight changes that have been made including talking about how data has played a role in shaping how the city responds to the problem of overdose. (Read more about that here.)
Muley noted that the darkness of that day last August attracted the hot spotlight of international attention on the city and that it was only right to highlight the lessons the city has learned and share them as widely as possible particularly with neighboring cities.
Commissioner Delphin-Rittmon.
Miriam E. Delphin-Rittmon, commissioner of the state Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services, said that such an event will complement a public awareness program that was just launched in the state this week called Live LOUD, or Live with Opioid Use Disorder. The aim of the program is to educate people about opioid abuse specifically and addiction generally and to break the stigma and urge people into treatment. The program also has a smartphone app from the Department of Public Health called NORA, or Naloxone + Overdose Resource app, that helps people learn how to administer the life-saving, overdose-reversal drug.
Don't glorify the 'anniversary' through an event.
It's going to be on those -- 'Look at us last year, look at us now moments -- Wow, aren't we great!'
Many of us reflect on the 'plight of the less fortunate' all the time, and bring 'our humanity' to bear in real time in real life, on the streets and on the Green.
In fact having a 'political event' about people's 'addiction problems' is 'exploitive'.
There will still be some people 'hanging around' who are struggling with their own 'addictions', resistant to 'treatment', who might feel 'shamed' by the Mayor & Co. throwing a 'Hoopla' in 'celebration of other's personal struggles'.
I think a story about the 'street psychologists' which are coming is a more suitable response, as well as an update as to the direct actions taken in the wake of this 'mass poisoning event'.
Remember -- 'Opioids' were not the problem here.
But watch the Political Turn...