News

Heroin and New Canaan, Part 1 of 3: Tracing and Defining a Problem

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Editor’s Note: This is the first installment of a three-part series. The final two parts can be found here:

Heroin and New Canaan, Part 2 of 3: Parenting
Heroin and New Canaan, Part 3 of 3: ‘Reach Out to a Person’

 

No one died from a heroin overdose in town in 2013, data from state officials tells us, yet the drug for many reasons has become increasingly prevalent in recent years—in New Canaan and most everywhere else around here, officials say. Rising with an epidemic in prescription drug abuse that’s largely rooted in a critical change in how the medical field started viewing and treating pain—in fact, heroin pharmacologically is identical to legal, prescribed opioids, physicians say—the drug’s availability and use has become one area of focus for professionals here who deal with all aspects of substance abuse. Though heroin overdoses in New Canaan thankfully haven’t been fatal in the past year, use and even overdoses are occurring, said Jacqueline D’Louhy, assistant director of youth services with the town’s Department of Human Services, an employee in the municipal agency for about nine years. Asked to characterize what she’s seen in local heroin use, D’Louhy said: “New Canaan does not have a death from heroin per se, but we have gotten close.

Government

New Canaan Mom: Town Has ‘Huge Underage Drinking Problem’

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New Canaan parents last week called for finance officials to support town youth by restoring modest funding levels to the Outback Teen Center and investing in technology infrastructure. During the March 4 Board of Finance meeting, Outback board member Claudia Pagazani said that the widely discussed underage drinking at an event last fall provided an opportunity to address the problem with her daughter “head-on, about the risks that she faces by making the wrong choices.” “There is a huge underage drinking problem in New Canaan,” she said during the meeting, held at the New Canaan Nature Center. “Maybe we attack that at an early age and we do that at the Outback by teaching kids to make the right choices.”

Advocates are seeking to raise taxpayer support for the teen center from $17,500 (the figure approved by the Board of Selectmen) to $20,000 (the current fiscal year’s funding level). Though the finance board will not approve and pass along a fiscal year 2015 budget to the Town Council until this week, members thanked Pagazani and other speakers—including Pagazani’s own young son—for their input and indicated that they would support the $2,500 of additional funding for the Outback. “I would propose this because the amount is a modest change,” said First Selectman Rob Mallozzi, the board’s chairman.