Chicopee had 2nd most ODs in county last year. What’s being done about it?
CHICOPEE — Almost a decade ago, Chicopee was the city hardest hit by heroin overdoses in Western Massachusetts.
Harm reduction specialists say that, while heroin is much less prevalent in Chicopee today than fentanyl and combination drugs, overdose rates are still high. There are new substances on the street that traditional overdose reversal methods, like Narcan, don't help with.
Meanwhile, Chicopee leadership attests to making broad efforts to reduce overdose rates by working with city departments to ensure members of the public are educated about substance use and partnering with local advocates to provide resources to people in need.
Recent statistics from the Hampden County Addiction Task Force , which is made up of members of the Hampden District Attorney's Office and the Hampden County Sheriff's Department, show the city ranked second behind Springfield last year — accounting for 18% of 651 fatal and non-fatal overdoses in across the county.
Most of the overdoses last year happened in the county's five bigger cities: Springfield, Chicopee, Holyoke, Westfield and West Springfield, the data shows.
The District Attorney's Office did not respond to specific questions about drug use in Chicopee and that city's overdose rate compared to Holyoke and Springfield.
However, the office did share that Chicopee's fatal overdose rate within the first six months of 2025 is down 55%, compared to the first six months of last year. The city's nonfatal overdose rate is down 48% for the same time frame compared to last year.
Antonio Román, harm reduction program manager for Tapestry Health, works directly with affected populations in Chicopee and West Springfield.
"I see a lot of folks from Chicopee every day. That number doesn't surprise me," said Román.
But in some ways, he said, Chicopee's experience with the opioid crisis is unlike that of Springfield and Holyoke, to which it is often compared.
"It's not an open-market town," he said, meaning drug use is predominantly indoors or in private. Román said that's likely because of stigmas within Chicopee's "family-oriented" culture.
"You wouldn't see where people are using drugs — it would be places like their home or cars, rather than on the street," he said.
Of the three cities, Chicopee is the most recent to pass and implement a safe syringe access program. The program, approved in 2019, allows a space for people who use drugs to safely exchange needles .
Discussions of adopting the program in Chicopee began after a child found a used hypodermic needle in a park, two years after the city's harrowing spike of heroin overdoses.
Holyoke was the first to approve the program, in 2012, followed by Springfield, where the City Council approved it in a unanimous vote in 2018.
Addressing the crisis
After John Vieau became the mayor of Chicopee in 2020, he developed initiatives that address the crisis, his administration said in an email.
While Vieau was not available for an interview, his office emailed information about efforts he and other city officials have implemented over the last few years.
Vacant police positions have been filled, for example, allowing for school resource officers in the Chicopee Public Schools.
The mayor recently asked the School Department to provide more substance-use counselors throughout the district to help with prevention, the statement said. Opioid settlement funds will be used for the effort.
The Police Department works with the Sheriff's Department and local advocates to provide resources to individuals in need, according to Officer Travis Odiorne, public information officer for the department.
He said that, since officers started carrying naloxone, which helps reverse an opioid overdose, the likelihood of overdoses being reversed has "significantly increased."
Close to 29,000 naloxone kits were received within a 20-mile radius of Chicopee last year, according to data from the state Department of Public Health.
Dr. Ari Kriegsman, medical director of the Behavioral Health Network detox facility and methadone clinic in Springfield, said most of the overdoses he sees in patients are from fentanyl. But there is a growing concern about combined drugs.
"We see a lot of xylazine and other additives," he said. "Patients are telling us that they don't like it, because the high doesn't last long."
Drug combinations, he said, are not always reversible using naloxone, and are more dangerous because of their unpredictability.
Stronger and longer-lasting drugs are also being mixed in, including sedatives like medetomidine , the Massachusetts Drug Supply Data Stream reported this month.
"This veterinary sedative, first detected in Philadelphia in 2024, began appearing in Massachusetts by that summer and is now found statewide, especially in central and western regions," said Payton North, communications director for the DA's office. "Harm reduction programs are now distributing test strips and issuing alerts to raise awareness and reduce risk."
Marlyn Velazquez, quality assurance coordinator for WestComm Regional Dispatch, said dispatchers get calls about overdoses one to two times a day.
All of the dispatchers who work at the regional service are trained and certified to take all calls, including providing support to a caller concerned that a loved one is overdosing.
"Most people already have Narcan when they call," she said. "We assess the patient's condition and ask questions — like if they are awake, breathing, how old they are and what they took. We also ask the caller if the overdose was intentional or accidental to gauge if the patient was trying to harm themself."
Reducing stigma
Kriegsman, the addiction specialist at Behavioral Health Network, said more can be done to reduce the stigmas around addiction and treatment.
"We have made progress, but there is still a long way to go," he said. He said more clinics should be staffed with methadone to "lower barriers and ease treatment."
Methadone, a medication that helps people overcome fentanyl overdose, is only dispensed at specialized opioid treatment programs at this point, he explained.
With clinics that are in place already, Kriegsman said he hopes methadone can be made more accessible, which can be done by expanding clinic hours, accepting walk-in patients daily, and allowing patients more freedom by permitting take-home doses rather than making them travel each day to the clinic.
"The more places that operate with methadone, the more people will have same-day access," he said, explaining people are 50% less likely to die from opioids with methadone treatment.
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