A deadly heroin epidemic continued unabated in New London County and statewide in 2014 despite law enforcement efforts to stem the flow of the drug into the region and a new law enabling more first-responders to use the life-saving antidote naloxone on overdose victims.

In the spring, the commissioner of the Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services announced that about one Connecticut person per day has been dying of a drug overdose and warned that some heroin had been laced with Fentanyl, a powerful painkiller. The state Office of the Chief Medical Examiner said that in the first six months of 2014, 151 Connecticut residents died of opioid overdoses.

Southeastern Connecticut was not immune. In March, a 24-year-old Waterford man died in a Groton hotel room after taking what police said was a "hot shot," or lethal overdose, of heroin. In June, East Lyme officials held a forum on the drug after a spate of overdoses, including two deaths.

- Karen Florin