PLAINVILLE — U.S. Senator Chris Murphy and U.S. Rep.Elizabeth Esty talked about efforts to deal with the growing crisis of opioid addiction Wednesday morning at the Plainville Senior Center.

“Thank you to all of you this morning for coming here and being part of what has become a tradition for me, which is to host small community pancake breakfasts around the state,” Murphy said.

Plainville was the first of five stops in the state for the Democratic senator on Wednesday as he and Esty, also a Democrat, talked to different communities about what was going on in Washington. One of the main discussions that they brought to Plainville concerned the struggles to combat opioid and heroin overdoses. Murphy mentioned that both the House and Senate had recently passed bills to aid heroin treatment systems.

“They are good bills but not great bills,” he said. “Not great bills because they don’t really spend any new money, they authorize money to be spent, but that doesn’t really matter if you’re not actually writing a check.”

He stated that more needs to be done. Several communities in the state are already on track to double their number of overdoses this year. Last year, he explained, 730 people died of overdoses in Connecticut.

“We have a lot of work to do,” Murphy said.

Like many surrounding towns, Plainville is not immune to the crisis. Town Manager Robert E. Lee commended the Plainville Police Department for putting forth the training needed to prevent overdose deaths.

“We fully embrace the efforts being made,” he said.

He mentioned that the steps the police take to save lives, as the town’s first responders, can be a lot for them to handle and can be costly. Murphy’s plans include a request for funding to assist in addiction treatments.

Plainville’s Police Chief Matthew Catania says the cost is only part of the conflict that officers face when dealing with the crisis. The other struggle is how to address the fact that there is a fine line between the treatment of addiction, and the criminal aspect of the drug.

“We would like to prevent crime and dissuade people from getting involved in illegal substances,” he said. “We want the public to recognize that we are interested in doing whatever we can to save lives.”

Esty recalled the many different people statewide who have been impacted by opioid and heroin addiction and have shared their stories with her. One woman, she said, was worried about her teenage son taking pills. She also added that fentanyl was a further concern as it is being mixed with heroin for a lethal combination. Esty stated that both young and old people were suffering from the crisis.

“We just have to do a better job,” she said.

Plainville officers recently began carrying Naloxone, known as Narcan, to treat overdoses in emergency situations. Catania says the department has had training in the past year, but they had to work to figure out how to effectively deploy the antidote.

“Based on circumstances, we find that we have much less incidences than other communities,” he said.

Murphy told the audience Wednesday that while Congress would start to move slower as election time approached he is still confident that there could be a law geared toward the crisis by the end of the year.