There’s a glimmer — the slightest vibrant spot — of fine information about drug overdoses in New York.
Town’s Well being Division studies that overdose deaths in 2023 declined in comparison with the earlier yr —however they fell only one %, from 3,070 to three,046.
A detailed take a look at that quantity reveals not solely is it tiny, however that an vital indicator has not declined.
As the town places it: “overdose deaths remained disproportionately high among Black and Latino New Yorkers.”
But residents of low-income neighborhoods of colour are precisely these wherein overdose deaths are alleged to be lowered by so-called “harm reduction” facilities — services wherein addicts can inject medication they carry with them beneath medical supervision.
The 2 “overdose prevention centers” run by OnPoint NYC — not authorized beneath federal regulation however permitted to function within the metropolis — are each situated in Black and Hispanic neighborhoods: one on East a hundred and twenty fifth Road in Harlem, one other on West one hundred and eightieth Road in Washington Heights, not removed from The Bronx, which suffers from the town’s highest charge of overdose deaths.
As the town turns a authorized blind eye towards hurt discount websites, it’s vital to ask whether or not they is likely to be encouraging laborious drug use — and not directly to the persistently excessive overdose dying charges within the neighborhoods these services serve.
A examine supported by the Nationwide Institute on Drug Abuse, carried out by the NYU Langone Medical Middle along with Brown College, has been funded to “measure the impact of some of the first publicly recognized overdose prevention centers (OPCs) in the United States.”
But it surely won’t report last outcomes till 2027 — and that’s too lengthy to attend to study extra a couple of program that’s neither authorized beneath federal drug legal guidelines nor sure to be useful.
To make sure, OnPoint NYC expresses no self-doubt in regards to the efficacy of its program. It’s satisfied that its steering for such actions as “safer sniffing, safer meth use” and “safer IV injection and safer crack/speedball injection” will cut back overdose deaths.
It counts as success that it has served greater than 5,000 sufferers and, it claims, intervened to stop 1,626 overdoses.
There’s an argument to be made, in different phrases, that, absent their efforts, New York would have suffered not a small drop however a pointy spike in OD deaths.
However the reality stays that overdose deaths stay persistently excessive within the very neighborhoods served by OnPoint suggests there are different methods to think about the impression of those efforts—which we should hope the NYU Langone-Brown examine will measure.
The core concept that drug use might be protected sends a message — certainly one of encouragement moderately than prevention.
Are the OnPoint Facilities treating established addicts or encouraging new ones?
Langone and Brown should take a look at who’s being served over time — the identical addicts or new ones?
Within the quick time period, furthermore—not in 4 years however as quickly as attainable — the town’s personal well being division can look at obtainable info to reply this query: are these dying from overdoses the identical addicts who’re allegedly being saved by OnPoint?
Town needn’t watch for the Langone/Brown examine— which is able to attempt to monitor 1,000 addicts over 4 years — to match the dying certificates of these dying from overdoses with the roster of these being seen on the protected injection websites.
These services, consider, aren’t open 24/7; addicts can overdose wherever.
Thus far, the town has not solely acquiesced within the OnPoint operations — it has been cheerleading them.
That’s the official message conveyed by the town’s Division of Well being and Psychological Hygiene Commissioner Dr. Ashwin Vasan who has stated: “The facts are clear — overdose prevention centers save lives. Overdose prevention centers are an evidence-based approach to harm reduction we must authorize, invest in, and expand to combat our overdose epidemic.”
One can solely puzzle over the assertion that the proof is from — years earlier than a serious federally-funded examine has delivered the information.
New York Metropolis, like municipalities across the nation, is in line to obtain tens of millions in so-called “opioid settlement” funds, from the producers of opioids which have been abused.
Town ought to use its $50 million to ship a transparent message: medication, from pot to fentanyl, aren’t a protected alternative however a nasty one.
Howard Husock is an American Enterprise Institute senior fellow and the writer of “The Poor Side of Town — And Why We Need It.”
