Growing Opioid Crisis Tests Limits of Methadone Clinics

Jose DeJesus pulls his silver minivan out of a parking lot in back of a row of historic houses on New Haven’s Congress Avenue. He points with pride to the flowers he planted around the lot. Then he grimly spins a commentary as he gives a tour of the surrounding Hill neighborhood.

There’s the John C. Daniels School, where parents are dropping off kids and where a man overdosed and died near a rear stairwell over the summer.
Across the street, there’s the APT Foundation clinic, where clients in recovery from opioid use come every morning for methadone.
There’s the bodega on the corner, where, he says, APT clients hang around and drug dealers tempt them with offers of heroin and other drugs.

“The clinic is a thorn in our side. People come to New Haven from all over and they hang out in the Hill,” says DeJesus, who is treasurer of the neighborhood’s community management team.

Source: Connecticut Mirror