Drug use has ticked up during the past year in The County
HOULTON, Maine — Reflecting on their activities this year, officials at the Van Buren Police Department noted in a Facebook post on Monday that in the past year they have seized a wide variety of drugs in the community, including bath salts, ecstasy, psilocybin mushrooms, methamphetamine, illegal prescription pills, marijuana and heroin.
Drug paraphernalia, including needles and various homemade pipes for consuming the drugs also have been found by police.
The variety and amount of drugs, especially the heroin, was not a surprise to Aroostook County Sheriff Darrell Crandall, Caribou Police Chief Michael Gahagan or Presque Isle Police Chief Matt Irwin, all of whom said that the drug has been discovered in their jurisdictions as well.
In Caribou, Gahagan said his city is “definitely seeing more drug activity than we have in the past.”
“We still see a lot of methamphetamine,” he said. “But we are now seeing more heroin. It started showing up here around the fall. Before that, it was mostly bath salts and methamphetamine.”
Gahagan said that heroin crept into Caribou slowly.
“First came the needles that we would find in the rest stops and the filling stations,” he recalled. “That was the tip off that something was going on. Then we started finding the heroin when we were out on calls. We started getting calls about possible overdoses.”
He said that his officers do not carry Naloxone, a drug sold under the brand name Narcan, which is a lifesaving prescription medication that reverses the effects of an overdose caused by prescription narcotics or heroin. The drug restores breathing, potentially allowing users to survive an otherwise fatal overdose. He said that the Caribou Ambulance Department responds within minutes to any emergency call and can revive people with Naloxone.
He also said that violence is on the increase in the city, including assaults and domestic violence, which he believes is a direct result of the drug problem and such crimes being committed while people are under the influence.
Sheriff Crandall said Tuesday that from his viewpoint, there has been a shift in the last year that has turned the focus more from the manufacturing of methamphetamine in the area to the new drug of choice, heroin, which is making its way into Aroostook from southern New England states and points south.
“It isn’t like we’ve seen methamphetamine and the other drugs go away, we are still focusing on them,” he said. “But we have seen a decrease in the manufacturing of methamphetamine because of very good work on the part of law enforcement, and great work on the part of the district attorney’s office in convincing businesses to stop the sale of pseudoephedrine,” the main ingredient.
He said that heroin has made inroads in The County because it is cheaper than prescription narcotics and “certainly cheaper on the wholesale level.”
“People who care nothing about human life can come here and sell it and make a huge profit,” said Crandall.
He said that a significant point in which law enforcement knew that heroin was “gaining ground” in The County was in July, when James Jamison, 33, of Waterbury, Connecticut, was charged with multiple crimes in South Portland after he was allegedly found by Maine Drug Enforcement Agency agents with heroin destined for Aroostook County. More than 2 pounds of heroin packaged into more than 10,000 individual bags reportedly were seized. Jamison’s heroin dealing in Aroostook County had been under investigation for several months and involved undercover drug purchases, according to Peter Arno, MDEA commander. It was believed to be the largest heroin seizure in state history.
Presque Isle Police Chief Matt Irwin said that although he does not have solid figures surrounding the amount of drugs seized in the community this year, he would “not be surprised” if there was an increase this year. He also said that heroin had been found in the city.
“It seems like as one drug fades, the other rises,” he said. “I have found over the past five years that I have been chief here that the curse and the blessing of living in The County is that it is hard to do much here without someone else finding out. So we as law enforcement find out about one meth lab or network of people selling drugs and shut that down, and then people find another drug to sell. It is about constantly putting out fires.”
