Opinion: Bold action needed to further reduce CT overdose deaths

CT Mirror – Thursday, March 27, 2025
By Robert Heimer

Robert Heimer, Ph.D. is a Professor of Epidemiology and of Pharmacology. The contents and opinions in this letter do not necessarily reflect the position of Yale University or the School of Public Health. They are those of the author.

Thirty-five years ago, the state of Connecticut initiated a controversial program of needle and syringe exchange to improve the health and ultimately save the lives of people whose wellbeing had previously been ignored. At that time, Connecticut was experiencing one of the worse HIV/AIDS epidemics in the country.

Around 650 new cases were being diagnosed each year, just among people who were injecting drugs. Connecticut had passed a law preventing pharmacy sales of syringes without a prescription, so syringes were scarce. People who were sharing them were sharing the viruses within those syringes.

We found that more than 90% of shared syringes collected from locations were people went to obtain scarce, used syringes were contaminated with HIV and hepatitis C virus. The infections spread to the children of infected individuals. New Haven had the country’s highest rate of mother-to-child transmission as HIV-infected women passed the virus to their infants.

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