Trends gleaned from comprehensive background research into the 18 drug overdose deaths reported in the city last year will be revealed at a presentation from Norwich Alderman Sam Browning IV on Tuesday.

Trends gleaned from comprehensive background research into the 18 drug overdose deaths reported in the city last year will be revealed at a presentation from Norwich Alderman Sam Browning IV on Tuesday.

The number of fatal overdoses is down from 33 in 2017.

Browning looked at data from sources such as the state Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, employment records, police department records and family interviews.

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This is Browning’s second year analyzing local trends in overdose deaths. In his first report, he found the average Norwich victim from 2017 was a white male between 25 and 55 years old who was transient, underemployed or working in a blue collar job, had never attended college, and had some sort of prior criminal record.

State medical Examiner Dr. James R. Gill told state lawmakers in March that the number of accidental drug overdoses statewide has nearly tripled since 2013, with more residents dying over the past two years from drug overdoses than from homicides, suicides and motor vehicle collisions combined.

The startling statistic came even as the total number of drug overdose deaths decreased slightly over the previous two years, from 1038 in 2017 to 1017 in 2018. Gill described it as "not a tremendous decrease, but certainly not an increase."

Gill noted that the potent synthetic opioid fentanyl is becoming the dominant drug in fatal overdoses.

In 23 cases from Browning’s evaluation of the 2017 data, the deceased had fentanyl in their system, and nearly every instance involved some combination of heroin and fentanyl. Fifteen victims were discovered to have at least two substances, and only three had neither heroin nor fentanyl in their system.

Thirteen people died in Norwich from drug overdoses in the first half of this year, according to data from the chief medical examiner’s office. All but one of the overdoses in Norwich between January and June involved fentanyl, according to the data.