These are uncomfortable days in the Vermont Senate, after its most senior and powerful member became tangentially involved in a major drug bust.

Last weekend, federal agents arrested two suspected drug dealers and seized more than a kilo of heroin — street value as high as half a million dollars —outside Almighty Peaks Painting, a business located in a Colchester strip mall owned by Sen. Dick Mazza (D-Grand Isle).

The mall is across the street from Mazza’s renowned general store, and includes nine storefronts. Mazza told VTDigger.org that business owner Darrick Holmes, who has also been arrested by the feds, had been his tenant for about seven years.

Word hit the Senate like a big ol’ blanket drenched in cold water. Mazza’s colleagues were uniformly discomfited by the news. They clearly sought to minimize Mazza’s responsibility, and wanted the story to just go away.

More than 130 people turned out to Burlington Mayor Miro Weinberger's Opioid Town Hall Meeting Thursday night to highlight local efforts to address the drug abuse crisis.

By most measures, the prognosis wasn't good. Burlington should be ready for a "multi-year slog" to fight opiates, Weinberger told the crowd that filled Burlington City Hall Auditorium.

Police Chief Brandon del Pozo, Rep. Selene Colburn (D/P-Burlington), University of Vermont Medical Center chief operating officer Stephen Leffler and Chittenden County State's Attorney Sarah George fielded questions from the audience and described their steps to address the problem.

The city has redoubled its efforts over the last 18 months, Weinberger said. Its strategies included hiring opioid policy coordinator Jackie Corbally, increasing data collection to measure success and forming a CommunityStat group to collaborate on solutions.

A Vermont Senate committee is seeking to create stiffer penalties for people who possess and deal fentanyl.

The drug, which can be 100 times more potent than heroin, has been linked to an unprecedented number of overdose deaths in Vermont. Health officials cited the drug on approximately 50 death certificates in 2016 — compared to 29 in 2015.

A total of 105 people died of opiate overdoses last year.

While the synthetic drug is already illegal to possess without a prescription, the proposed bill establishes additional penalties.

“I think the important thing is we create a crime that our prosecutors can use when fentanyl is involved and someone knowingly does this,” said Sen. Dick Sears (D-Bennington), who chairs the judiciary committee and is leading the effort.

Heroin and other substances are often laced with fentanyl unbeknownst to the person who buys it. But Sears added: “The bill will distinguish between those who knowingly are cutting heroin with fentanyl versus those who are unknowingly selling heroin laced with fentanyl.”

As one Vermont House committee works on a bill that would legalize possession and growing of small amounts of marijuana, other House members still hope to go further — legalizing and taxing the sale of the drug.

Rep. Sam Young (D-Glover) is the lead sponsor of a bill due to be introduced Wednesday. On Tuesday, he collected cosponsors and said he expected to have about 15 lawmakers sign on.

"If we're going to legalize marijuana, I think we should also tax and regulate it," said Young, who is vice chair of the Committee on Ways & Means.

Young said he's received no assurances from legislative leaders that his bill would pass. Taxing and regulating marijuana is an approach the Senate passed last year, but that failed to gain traction in the House.

The city of Burlington on Thursday announced it will team up with local and state entities to improve its response to the opiate crisis.

Mayor Miro Weinberger presented 11 "opioid principles" at Burlington City Arts to describe and guide the city's approach to the ongoing crisis. The principles include basic statements that establish the danger of prescription opioids, label addiction as a public health crisis, and assert the importance of "data collection, data sharing, analysis and transparency."

To effect change, the city plans to increase collaboration with the University of Vermont Medical Center, other local police departments, the Vermont Department of Health, and the Chittenden County State's Attorney's Office.

"We are orienting ourselves as a city for a long-term struggle with this problem," Weinberger said.

More people died of opiate overdoses in Vermont in 2016 than any other year, according to a Vermont Department of Health report released Wednesday.

The preliminary report shows that 105 people died from opiate overdoses, up from 75 in 2015. The finding, revealed by Barbara Cimaglio, deputy health commissioner, on Vermont Public Radio's "Vermont Edition" on Wednesday, confirmed Seven Days' recent report that opiates claimed a record number of Vermonters last year.

Cimaglio said that overdoses on prescription drugs such as oxycodone fell in 2016, continuing a recent trend. But heroin, which has widely varying levels of potency, and fentanyl, an opiate that can be 50 times as potent as heroin, are killing more people than ever before.

Fentanyl, a prescription drug that is also manufactured illicitly, was involved in 50 overdoses in 2016 — up from 29 in 2015 and 18 in 2014.

On Thursday morning Burlington Mayor Miro Weinberger announced a citywide effort to create a comprehensive, data-driven response to the opiate crisis.

Speaking to the press at Burlington City Hall, Weinberger announced the hiring of opioid policy coordinator Jackie Corbally, who will fill a new position working as a public health adviser for the Burlington Police Department and managing opiate-response efforts across departments and organizations.

The announcement followed a gathering of more than 40 government officials, nonprofit leaders and medical workers in the first meeting of a new initiative called CommunityStat. The model will emphasize data collection, coordinated approach and rapid follow-up. Weinberger called the initiative a "a new front in the city's response to the opiate challenge that is gripping the city."

Later, Seven Days met with Corbally in her office in the Burlington Police Department to discuss the details and challenges of her work. The conversation was edited for clarity and brevity.

Seven Days: How does your background qualify you for this position?
Jackie Corbally: First and foremost, I'm a social worker. And I've been a social worker for 30 years. Social work is about community change and it's about teaming and it's about working with various partners. I've worked at Spectrum. I've worked at the Baird Center. I've done internships with the state hospital; I've worked for Women Helping Battered Women. I feel like my career has been really varied. I worked for the Health Department's Alcohol and Drug Abuse Program for 10 years. [Most recently] I went back and was a clinician on the ground because I had to get back to my roots and have some really real conversations with the people who were in the throes of addiction.

SD: What are the initial steps you'll take as opioid policy coordinator?
JC: I think we started today, by bringing community partners around the table [and] beginning to have some really hard and honest conversation about what we're doing well and what we're not doing well and recognizing where the barriers are and how we need to knock those down. Secondarily, working with the police department ... providing education and support to the department.

SD: What is the data you'll be collecting and how do you plan to apply that to your work?
JC: When we demonstrated the data we had today ... it was clear there were holes. What we're hoping is that the data will show where we're having success in the city and where we're not. Are people able to get housing in a timely manner? Are people able to get treatment? One thing we know about addiction is, when the person's ready to make the life change, you have got to be there to offer the services. If you delay, there's the potential you're going to lose them.

SD: What kind of on-the-ground changes can the public expect to see, in terms of the police department's response and the city's approach?
JC: The police department's response is tying folks into assessments. Folks might come in and we hook them up with somebody who can give them an assessment within 24 hours to move them along their treatment path. Someone who has been arrested, someone who just comes to the police department and needs help. We're just in the beginning and this is going to evolve.

When we do this, when we get to a place where we're operating at full capacity, this will be a really vibrant place where the community can access treatment, can access the prevention that they need. If we're doing it the right way, there won't be any silos. The systems will be talking to each other as one and be able to augment the services in a timely fashion.

SD: How will you determine your metrics for success?
JC: We are just deciding that. Today was the first conversation with the community partners around what are the data elements that they're collecting in their agencies; where are the gaps. Now we're taking it back and doing a debrief next week and then we'll make a measure of that.

SD: Holistic opiate treatment involves a lot of different components including health care, housing, et cetera. What impact do you see this initiative having on the community as a whole or in other areas long-term?
JC: I think first and foremost, we look at this disease as a chronic health disease. Meaning that you just don't go and get treatment for six weeks and then you're better. Another thing is to recognize that this disease is based in shame and humiliation. Having a level of understanding that you don't choose this.

When we talk about opiate addiction, it's more than just someone committing crime, or somebody losing their children. It's a chronic health disease. It changes the brain structure, and it takes time when somebody engages in recovery to get to a place where they're fully functioning.

SD: What have you seen as the biggest gap in the cooperation or coordination in the programs across Burlington?
JC: The system is really stretched right now. It really is, when you have a 50-person caseload, and you have a person who has done criminal behavior ... You've also got someone who's suicidal and kids who are being taken away. These folks are just really overwhelmed. Part of it is just how can we alleviate that burden.

We need to norm the data. I can promise you that the people in the community are like, 'I'm dealing with people right now, I don't have time for that.' What we're trying to do ... is to shift the lens. Data can be a fantastic tool, but you've got to invest in it.

Updated Tuesday, August 16, at 1:05 p.m. to include additional information about overdoses in Barre City. 

A potentially deadly strain of heroin is being dealt in central Vermont, the Northeast Kingdom and other parts of the state, according to state health officials.

The Vermont Department of Health issued a warning Monday morning after emergency responders reported at least 10 overdoses over the weekend that required more than one dose of Narcan to revive the person. The news release notes that some of those incidents have been linked to a strain of heroin labeled "Game of Thrones," which may be laced with fentanyl, a synthetic painkiller that can be up to 50 times more potent than heroin. 

Burlington police on Wednesday said that fentanyl, a potent synthetic painkiller that has caused scores of fatal drug overdoses, was found in heroin that caused three recent overdoses in the Queen City. 

The victims all survived, police said. Authorities used naloxone, a overdose-reversing drug that Burlington police carry, to save some of them, police said.

Fentanyl is impossible for users to detect. It has been showing up in batches of heroin in Vermont with increasing frequency, police said. It caused 29 fatal overdoses in the state in 2015, up from 18 in 2014, according to the Vermont Department of Health. 

Musician Prince fatally overdosed on fentanyl in April at his home in Minnesota.

After failing to reach agreement on legalizing marijuana, House and Senate leaders have come together on planning for the future.

The Joint Legislative Justice Oversight Committee will convene six hearings this summer and fall to look at issues surrounding legalizing and regulating marijuana, Senate Judiciary Committee chair Dick Sears (D-Bennington) said Friday.

With marijuana legalization likely coming to neighboring states, Sears said, it’s important to plan for the impact on Vermont.

“I’m tremendously concerned about what’s happening in Massachusetts and Maine,” Sears said. Those states have voter initiatives on the ballot this November. “We’d be better prepared.”