This week I attended a meeting in the Governor’s office in the state capitol to advocate for a bill creating the state’s first overdose prevention center. I was one of a group of eight meeting with the Governor’s chief of staff. Our group included two mothers who had lost their sons to overdose and were now fierce advocates, a young man who had survived an overdose and now worked in harm reduction, a prominent Yale epidemiologist who was one of the founders of syringe exchange in Connecticut many years before, a woman who helped start both the first overdose prevention centers in Vancouver and those in New York City, and several Yale public health students who had taken on the legislation as part of their course work. We also had two speakers who appeared via zoom, a public interest lawyer and a woman who ran the overdose prevention site in nearby Rhode island. I was there to speak from the perspective of a paramedic who had responded to overdoses,
The legislature was in session so the capitol was busy that day. I had to circle through the visitor’s garage several times before I found a parking spot. There were school buses parked outside. Many groups toured the capitol, I said hello to a few people in yellow tee shirts that said health equity Day. The aide was running late due to a brief emergency. Legislators and lobbyists conferred near us. There was a loud din in the building that made it hard for me to hear the woman I was sitting next to. A news crew was setting up to interview someone on camera.
Thirty years ago I worked in the same building. I was the executive assistant to the public health commissioner. I wrote speeches for the governor. I would meet with him in his office and then go up a flight of stairs to a desk in the Lieutenant Governor’s office where I worked on the drafts. I’d been working for the Governor off and on since I was seventeen, starting as an intern in Washington when he was a Senator, opening the mail, and progressing to a legislative aide, advisor and speech writer. I had on a number of occasions over the years like the chief of staff, who led us into a small conference room where we sat at a long rectangular table, met with groups of constituents who came to his office to talk about an issue of importance to them. I listened intently and later passed on to my boss what I had learned.
In the years since my time in government, which ended in January of 1995 (Weicker’s last day as Governor- I started as a paramedic in Hartford the very next day), I have on several occasions been on the other side of the table, as I was this week, in meeting either with representatives or their staff. I appreciated each instance. Democracy in action. I have had nothing but good experiences with legislators, both state and federal. This meeting went well too.
The aide who met with us, was attentive, asked probing questions and listened despite his i-phone pinging constantly with messages.
When it was my turn to speak, I told him of the many overdoses I had been on and the fatalities I had seen in public parks, down alleyways, on church steps, and behind locked bedroom doors. I told the story of two overdoses, one at a local fast food restaurant where a young man overdosed and died in the bathroom (wedged behind the door), found too late and another of an overdose in the city’s drop in center where a young man of a similar age used the bathroom. A timer was set by the staff and when he didn’t respond after three minutes, the door which swung out was opened. The man who had overdosed was quickly resuscitated with naloxone and by the time I arrived, he was alert and talking to the harm reduction worker there. He didn’t want to go to the hospital, and she agreed to watch him for a while. I cleared up in time to take a difficulty breathing call.
I also showed the aide a map of all the fatalities in the city and the state in the last three years. Each death appeared as a diamond on the map in the location where the person died. There were over 4,500 diamonds on the map, many piled high on top of each other. 91% of those who died, died using alone. Nearly all the deaths were preventable.
My old boss used to say it was his job to bring the voices of the powerless into the halls of power. I was proud of our current governor for allowing us to represent those voices in that room, voices of the dead and those still at risk.
The bill will likely be voted on in May or June at the latest. It has good support. I am hoping that the legislature will approve it, and the governor will sign it into law.