Garrett Curtis, Staff Photographer

New Haven police officers arrested two individuals in possession of fentanyl and crack cocaine with the intent to sell on Jan. 31, according to New Haven Police Communications Officer Christian Bruckhart.

A week later, police from Stamford and Bristol also made arrests of alleged narcotics dealers in possession of several controlled substances.

These incidents have spotlighted an evolving and increasingly mobile drug trade in Connecticut, police officers from New Haven and Stamford told the News.

The emergence of new drugs, including xylazine — a potent animal tranquilizer and sedative — has raised further alarm and complicated the narcotics crisis, according to the New Haven Health Department.

Stamford Assistant Police Chief Richard Conklin stated that the proximity to regional narcotics hubs like New York, Boston and the I-95 corridor allows easy trafficking access for sellers to funnel into New Haven and neighboring municipalities.

“New Haven is typically an end-sale distribution point for [dealers], with medium and low-level drug sales,” Bruckhart said. By contrast, Stamford is both a sale and transfer point.

“But [the nature of these sales] certainly [are] not what we had years ago, [with] open drug markets on certain streets or corners and neighbors. With the advent of the cell phone, they’ve moved online. A lot of traffickers are kind of nomadic,” Conklin said.

Due to the newfound mobility of the drug trade, municipal agencies — as well as federal authorities like the Drug Enforcement Agency and FBI — often work together on investigations where cases expand beyond their jurisdictions, Conklin added.

Yet, while recent drug trafficking cases may raise alarm regarding the opioid epidemic in Connecticut, both fatal and nonfatal overdoses have generally been trending downwards in New Haven and Connecticut localities.

In New Haven, fatal overdoses fell from 147 in 2023 to 89 in 2024 within New Haven, according to data provided by the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner. Nonfatal overdoses similarly decreased by 6.2 percent in 2024 from the year prior, per preliminary data gathered by the Overdose Detection Mapping Application Program.

“The population in New Haven most affected by fatal overdoses were white males between the ages of 40 and 69,” Maritza Bond, the health director of the New Haven Health Department, wrote in an email to the News.

However, Bond noted that overdose fatalities among “Black and Brown” males have surged in recent years by 131 percent and among Hispanic residents by 100 percent. 

The New Haven Health Department declined to provide year-to-year overdose data by demographic, citing privacy concerns due to small numerical figures. The majority of these overdoses also included fentanyl consumption.

“84 percent [of fatal overdoses] involved fentanyl in 2023 [and] 75 percent involved fentanyl in 2024. Compared to 2019, the presence of fentanyl in overdose fatalities increased by 42.6 percent,” Bond wrote.

The Center for Disease Control, or the CDC, notes that a majority of fentanyl-related overdoses are the product of consuming illegally manufactured fentanyl, as opposed to pharmaceutical fentanyl. Fentanyl is mixed into substances bought on the street to reduce the costs of production and is then purchased — often without the knowledge of — its user. Due to its potency, it proves a highly addictive and dangerous threat.

However, a new and equally prescient threat has emerged in recent years — xylazine.

Xylazine has become increasingly mixed within drug supplies, according to Bond. As a non-opioid sedative, xylazine overdoses cannot be reversed using naloxone, or Narcan.

“Shockingly, the presence of Xylazine [in overdose fatalities] has increased by 2,700 percent [since 2019],” Bond wrote.

Nevertheless, a five-year CDC grant of $10 million awarded to New Haven in the fall of 2023 has expanded efforts to target the consumption of fentanyl, xylazine and controlled substances in the county.

According to Bond, it has enabled New Haven County partner health departments to hire “overdose prevention navigators” to educate residents on the dangers of controlled substances, how to administer overdose reversal medication and how to connect drug users with housing and healthcare support services. 

Additionally, the grant has enabled the creation of a data surveillance program spanning six New Haven County health departments to make real-time measure maneuvers to prevent overdoses.

Yet, while a by and large reduction in overdoses may indicate a shift in the illicit narcotics crisis, Conklin clarified that overdose numbers cannot be used as an indicator of reduced drug sales.

“First responders now [having to] carry Narcan, rehabilitation access, and overdose counselling have dropped overdoses, [but] not sales. Sales of fentanyl, crack cocaine, and pills have remained pretty constant,” Conklin clarified.

Bruckhart, too, elaborated that while reducing sales and averting possible consumption remains a priority of the department, a large proportion of the NHPD’s drug traffic investigations revolve around preventing the violence they may yield.

“We see that violence tends to be associated with [narcotics] sales. You know, someone tries to rob your local pop dealer and it turns into a homicide,” Bruckhart said. “Yes, narcotics are a large focus of the department, but for a large part because [they] drive [violent crime] more.”

Nonetheless, Bond emphasized the necessity of an “all-hands-on-deck” approach to the opioid and drug crisis in New Haven, and added that officials need to treat it as a chronic disease, not a moral issue.

Fentanyl is a Schedule II narcotic — representing substances with a high potential for abuse — under the United States Controlled Substances Act of 1970. Xylazine has not yet been classified.