K2 crisis wanes over the weekend

NEW HAVEN — After more than 100 K2 overdoses last week, the crisis appears to be waning.

Three of the city’s 10 overdoses on Saturday were related to K2, a synthetic cannabis, while there was only one K2 overdose reported as of 1:30 p.m. Sunday, said Rick Fontana, the director of the Office of Emergency Management. He said these numbers are close to average and significantly less than last week, when people were dropping on the Green.

“What we’d seen was unprecedented,” he said. “This is something we were not used to. [It was] all hands on. Now, it’s leveled off. Now, we’re back to normal, providing what we do on a regular basis.”

Fontana said Sunday’s lone K2 overdose might not have been from the same synthetic cannabis that people took last week.

“We think we got that off the street,” he said. “The police department did a magnificent job through their law enforcement and through their task force getting that off the street.”

Fontana said the type of K2 circulating last week was fast acting, but “short lived,” noting that victims brought to the hospital unconscious would walk off their stretchers and leave the hospital moments later.

“The stuff we had seen on the street was extremely, extremely, extremely potent,” he said.

But with that K2 off the streets, Fontana said that some people have already turned from synthetic cannabis to opiates.

“It’s almost like pick your poison and that’s the sad thing,” he said. “If they revert way from the K2, they’re going to go back to the other stuff.”

Fontana said that makes the work of mental health organizations all the more critical.

Gov. Dannel Malloy will meet Monday afternoon at the Connecticut Medical Health Center with Jim Carroll, the nominee for federal “drug czar” and current deputy director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, and other federal, state and local officials to discuss addiction and substance-use disorders.

Still, Fontana stressed that normality is returning to the city.

“Your safety isn’t compromised because you’re coming to the city of New Haven,” he said.