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drug fatalities on the rise
‘Wedon’tknow
howbaditis’
Online: To learn more
about the growing
heroin problem in Connecticut
and beyond, go to nhregister.
com/topic/heroin.
Inside: County-by-county
deaths attributable to heroin
in 2010and 2013. page a5
New
Haven
65
Middlesex
8
Litchfield
20
Hartford
82
Tolland
6
Windham
8
New London
34
Fairfield
34
Litchfield
20
hartford
82
tolland
6
Windham
8
middlesex
8New
Haven
65
New
london
34
fairfield
34
heroindeathsbycountyin2013
Source: Connecticut Office of the Chief Medical Examiner
Note: Red dots graph the
relative number of 2013deaths, by
county, due to heroin.
thinkstock.com
Dramatization of a heroin user dissolving the drug in a spoon.
the trentonian
A person injects heroin into an arm.
“I’m very scared
for our nation
in how fast this
has grown and
spread. This is
an epidemic.”
— John Roberts,
retired Chicago police officer
By MaryJo Webster
and Jessica Glenza
Digital First Media
Electedofficials,lawenforcement
officers and others proclaim there’s
a heroin “epidemic” sweeping the
country, and it’s taking hold in ru-
ralandsuburbancommunitiesonce
considered unlikely places to find il-
licit drugs.
But nobody knows how many
people have died.
Nobody knows how many have
overdosed and survived.
Nobody even knows for certain
where the problem is most severe.
The Centers for Disease Con-
trol and Prevention reported that
3,036 people died in 2010 from her-
oin overdoses, but due to problems
with how death investigations are
conducted and how those deaths
aredocumented,theCDCestimates
that its tally is at least 25 percent
short, possibly more.
“I’m very scared for our nation in
howfastthishasgrownandspread,”
said John Roberts, a retired Chi-
cago police officer who created The
HEROFoundationafterhissondied
ofaheroinoverdosein2010.“Thisis
an epidemic. But it’s not getting the
attention that it needs because we
don’t know how bad it is.”
In Connecticut, the Office of the
Chief Medical Examiner keeps
data on overdose deaths. In 2013
there were 257 heroin-related over-
dose deaths, up from 174 in 2012. In
2010, the latest data available from
the CDC, 74 people died of heroin-
related overdoses in Connecticut.
Whilethat257percentincreaseisre-
flected in data kept at the state level,
it isn’t seen in the nationwide statis-
tics, which haven’t been updated for
Heroin:
‘Epidemic’
sweeping
nation; scope
unknown
Heroin » Page 5
By Isaac Avilucea
iavliucea@registercitizen.com
@IsaacAvilucea on Twitter
The walls, papered in obituaries
of friends who succumbed to drug
overdoses, had finally closed in on
Michael Carlson that fateful day in
April 2009.
While his parents cooked dinner
in the kitchen of their Bristol home,
Carlson snuck to his bedroom to
bootheroinforwhathebelievedwas
the last time, in a suicide attempt.
When his parents checked on him,
they found him gray, unconscious
and not breathing.
Tracy Carlson rushed to the
laundry room for the bottles of
Narcan she had purchased two
weeks before, at a parent support
group meeting in Southington. At
the time, she had only $9 in cash,
enough for three bottles of the life-
saving drug. She needed two to get
her son breathing again, before
paramedics arrived and took over.
Michael Carlson, in the midst
of what medical experts call acute
withdrawal, lashed out at paramed-
ics loading him onto an ambulance.
“I remember waking up long
enough to tell my guy on the right
to f--- himself,” he said.
Now 25, Michael Carlson is living
and working as a drug and alcohol
interventionistinWestPalmBeach,
Florida. He knows he’s alive today
because of Narcan, also known as
naloxone, a drug that counteracts
opiate overdoses by reversing re-
spiratoryfailurewhenadministered
within a four-minute window, the
amount of time the brain can sur-
vive without oxygen.
Despite the drug’s efficacy at re-
ducing the mortality rate of heroin
and opiate addicts — more than
10,000 reversals in the U.S. and
Narcan:
Access to
overdose
reversal drug
still limited
Narcan » Page 5
By Jim Shelton
jshelton@nhregister.com
@JimboShelton on Twitter
New Haven >> A new book offers
the best glimpse yet of the social-
climbing sneak thief who stole
millions of dollars in rare maps
from Yale University and other
institutions a decade ago.
E. Forbes Smiley III, a Gatsby-
like character who rose from mod-
est beginnings to the inner circle
of the rare map world, is the cen-
tral figure in “The Map Thief,”
which arrives in bookstores in
early June.
Smiley made off with $2.3 million
in antique maps from Yale, Harvard,
the New York Public Library, Bos-
ton Public Library, the British Li-
brary and the Newberry Library in
Chicago.
His arrest in 2005, after he
dropped an X-Acto knife on the
floor of the Beinecke Rare Book and
Manuscript Library’s reading room,
sent shock waves through the ranks
of rare book and map collectors, li-
braries and dealers. It also exposed
serious lapses in library security at
Yale and elsewhere.
“At (Yale’s) Sterling Memorial Li-
brary, even they would admit secu-
rity wasn’t adequate at the time,”
said Michael Blanding, the Boston-
based journalist who wrote “The
Map Thief.” “The Beinecke had
tighter security, but Smiley stole
from there several times previously
before he was caught.”
Smiley admitted to pinching 97
maps, starting in 2002. They in-
cluded a 1631 map of New England
by John Smith, a 1676 map of New
England by John Seller and more
than a dozen others at Yale.
new haven
Yale ‘Map Thief’ story told in new book
Thief » Page 2
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» nhregister.comMonday, May 12, 2014 $1.00 FACEBOOK.COM/NEWHAVENREGISTER TWITTER.COM/NHREGISTER