![]() ![]() ![]() That's because big-city junkies don't get hooked on drugs the way people do in suburban and rural areas, he said. Related: America's First Opioid Court Focuses on Keeping Users Aliveīut fentanyl did not immediately make the same kind of inroads into New York City that it did in opioid-ravaged Rust Belt states, Curtis said. “Remember Tango and Cash?” asked Curtis, referring to a batch of fentanyl-laced heroin that killed five people in New York City in 1991, prompting the NYPD to send out cars with loudspeakers warning junkies not to buy it. “Especially the last year.”įentanyl first appeared in the South Bronx back in the 1990s, he said. ![]() “It's always kind of been here, but not at the level we have now,” said Ric Curtis, anthropology professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice. Recently, the NYPD moved to shut down a shooting gallery that was operating out in the open in the South Bronx after it was exposed by The New York Daily News.įentanyl, the drug that killed Prince last year and which the DEA says is 25 to 50 times more powerful than heroin, is also no stranger to the city. To this day, the Big Apple accounts for about a third of all the heroin seized in the U.S., according to the DEA. Nelson Rockefeller and which mandated a minimum 15-years-to-life sentence for anybody convicted of selling two ounces of heroin.īut while that filled the jails with low-level drug dealers, a disproportionate number of whom were minorities, it did little to dampen the demand of New Yorkers in desperate need of a fix. In the 1970s, New York State passed the Rockefeller Drug Laws, which were named after then-Gov. And it was the subject of William Burroughs' searing first novel “Junky,” which was published in 1953. Heroin, however, is hardly new to New York City. I'm confident New York City can lead the way in this.” “This is about teaching everyone from school age kids to adults with major substance abuse problems to make good decisions, to resist peer pressure, and to live their lives in a positive, healthy, and productive way. “When we interview those who have been fortunate enough to not die after an overdose we don't lock them up,” he said. Related: Discarded Syringes From Heroin Crisis Creates Environmental Problems NYPD Commissioner James O'Neill, however, cautioned when the city's strategy was unveiled, that “you can't arrest your way out of this problem.” On the enforcement side, the NYPD has created Overdose Response Squads to target drug dealers and has assigned 84 detectives and hired 50 lab technicians “to combat this epidemic and disrupt the supply of opioids before they come into the city.” The city, according to Lapeyrolerie, is also expanding opioid treatment facilities and creating “additional mental health clinics in high-need schools that account for a disproportionate share of suspensions and mental health issues, which can be precursors for substance misuse.” “In 2017, (the) NYPD saved nearly 300 lives thus far with naloxone.” “We are already seeing results from our effort,” Lapeyrolerie wrote. Office of the Special Narcotics Prosecutor For the City of New York Seized packages, which contained a suspected combination of fentanyl and heroin, during a drug bust on Central Park West in Manhattan on Monday. Some of those measures mirror what New York is trying to achieve with its program, Healing NYC, a $38 million initiative launched earlier this year aimed at reducing opioid overdose deaths by 35 percent over the next five years.Īs part of its strategy, the city is in the process of distributing 100,000 naloxone kits to the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, the NYPD and other first responders and boost its ongoing “Save a Life, Carry Naloxone” public awareness campaign. The presidential commission on opioids had previously recommended such a move, which will allow the executive branch to direct funds towards additional treatment facilities and waive some federal restrictions on Medicaid recipients getting treatment. On Thursday, the president reversed course and announced he would declare a national emergency in the battle against opioids. The Trump administration did not respond to several questions from NBC News about the response to opioids in New York City. Related: The Awful Arithmetic of America's Overdoses May Have Gotten Worse Hopefully, the Trump administration will put its money where its mouth is and actually help save lives." “We couldn't wait for federal action any longer, which is why we launched our own plan to combat this epidemic using proven health and safety efforts. “It's troubling that it took the President this long to see the deaths of 1,300 New Yorkers and tens of thousands of Americans as an emergency,” De Blasio spokeswoman Olivia Lapeyrolerie said. ![]()
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