Community Corner

'It Needs to be Everyone Looking at it as a Community Concern'

The local prevention council will be discussing the drug overdose incident at Quassy at its meeting in Southbury on Sept. 24.

SMART had no intention of talking about 2C-P at its regularly scheduled meeting on Tuesday, but after this weekend's incident at Quassy, the local prevention council says it's something that needs to be addressed.

The incident in question took place late Saturday night during a rave-type concert at the Middlebury amusement park, when four teens suddenly dropped to the ground due to an overdose of Ketamine and 2C-P — hallucinogens.

“This, of course, was not on the agenda until Sunday morning when I saw it in the paper,” says Noel Federle, chairperson of SMART, a prevention council for the towns of Middlebury and Southbury.

The meeting, which is open to the public, will take place at 7 p.m. in Room 205 at Southbury Town Hall on Tuesday, Sept. 24.

Find out what's happening in Southburywith free, real-time updates from Patch.

What's 2C-P?

While the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) maintains a page on its website dedicated to Ketamine, there is no mention of 2C-P and a search online for that drug yields no real credible results. A representative from the DEA's New England Division was also not immediately available Monday afternoon.

Find out what's happening in Southburywith free, real-time updates from Patch.

"I know nothing about it," Middlebury's Acting Police Chief Richard Wildman tells Patch. "The doctors know nothing about it."

Federle describes 2C-P as a synthetic hallucinogen akin to LSD. "I had actually not even heard of it being around here, so that was new to me," she says. 

While the youngsters who overdosed are apparently not from the immediate area, according to police, SMART still feels an obligation to address the issue.

"They don’t have to be our students for us to do something about it,” Federle says.

"Ideally, what we’d like to do is reach out to our local selectmen and police stations and possibly someone from the schools to sit down and discuss it as a community," she continues. "It needs to be everyone looking at it as a community concern.”

— Jaimie Cura contributed to this report.


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