Staten Island District Attorney Michael McMahon called out Gov. Kathy Hochul on fentanyl last week, and he’s entirely right: She’s again trying to dodge the toughest issues.
In the local part of the national crisis, New Yorkers by the hundreds are dying from ODs; shameless addicts plague the streets.
Yet New York’s so-called experts, including public-health officials, keep insisting on nothing but “harm reduction” strategies that are worse than useless, as they encourage addiction.
So naturally Hochul has created an OD-prevention task force packed exclusively with 17 “experts” from across state agencies.
It’s a task farce.
Hence McMahon’s move last week, slamming the gov for failing to include officials and family members directly, personally affected by the crisis. Nor even a rep from law enforcement.
Her farce comes a year after she vetoed a bill to create a state task force on fighting fentanyl, at which time she promised to create one on her own.
“After months and months of lip service, the governor has taken the revolutionary step of instructing her own staff to simply do their jobs: Discuss the issue amongst themselves and audit their own performance on dealing with the overdose crisis before providing recommendations to her,” says McMahon.
“They will meet just a handful of times, yet conveniently still apart and removed from the pain and suffering of Staten Islanders except for a ‘public listening session’ that will be treated as nothing more than checking a box.”
We’re not sure any task force would be a major step forward, but this one is guaranteed to fail. It lacks anyone who’s felt the devastating ramifications of drug abuse: mothers, brothers and frontline professionals touched by the scourge of opioid abuse with first-hand experience of what doesn’t work.
All this, as the public-health bureaucracy is going for same-old, same-old even in the face of tranq.
Again: The progressive “harm reduction” approach centers on “how to do drugs safely,” when the only focus with a hope of working is “don’t touch drugs that will ruin your life even if they don’t kill you” (along with cutting off the supply).
Indeed, progressives’ logic leads to legalization, “solving” the problem by pretending it isn’t one except a need for more “support” for addicts.
No: Some carrots may be helpful, but you’ll get nowhere without a lot of sticks, too.
New York and the nation need to fight fentanyl (and tranq), not surrender and “learn to live with it.”
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