Mayor Eric Adams.
Workplace of the Mayor of New York Metropolis
Public security is our administration’s prime precedence, and holding New Yorkers secure from the rising risk of fentanyl is a core a part of that mission.
All of us have heard concerning the hazard fentanyl poses to our youngsters and our communities. Fentanyl is an artificial opioid that’s roughly 50 instances stronger than heroin and 100 instances stronger than morphine. It’s cheap, broadly accessible, extremely addictive, and very harmful.
Drug traffickers are more and more mixing fentanyl with different illicit medication to drive habit and create repeat enterprise. Over 3,000 folks fatally overdosed in New York Metropolis in 2022, with fentanyl detected in 81 % of drug overdose deaths.
The tragic demise of Nicholas Dominici, the toddler who died after being uncovered to fentanyl at a daycare heart, was a stunning and heartbreaking reminder that we should take instant motion to get this disaster beneath management.
Final week, we hosted a two-day summit on the fentanyl disaster that introduced elected leaders, public well being officers, and regulation enforcement professionals from throughout the nation to New York Metropolis to work in the direction of a nationwide technique to fight fentanyl overdoses.
The summit included representatives from main cities throughout the nation, together with Los Angeles, Philadelphia, New Orleans, Laredo, New Haven, Austin, Dallas, St. Louis, Washington D.C., Portland, San Diego, Atlanta, and extra. We targeted on all elements of the disaster – together with training, enforcement, consciousness, prevention, and therapy. Over the course of two days and a number of technique classes, we have been in a position to change concepts, study from intervention fashions throughout municipalities, and assist construct a complete technique to deal with one of the necessary public well being and public questions of safety of our time.
New York Metropolis has already taken important steps to fight the fentanyl disaster, together with intensive enforcement that has resulted in a number of arrests of drug sellers and traffickers, together with the latest arrest of a person transporting virtually 30 kilos of fentanyl bricks in a rolling suitcase on the subway and on the sidewalks of a busy Bronx neighborhood.
Along with expanded enforcement, we’re actively working with the New York Metropolis Division of Well being and Psychological Hygiene and different companies to bolster our hurt discount methods. Now we have elevated our help for prevention, substance use dysfunction therapy and restoration applications citywide, and distributed greater than 77,000 Naloxone kits and tens of 1000’s of fentanyl and xylazine take a look at strips. Now we have additionally made Naloxone extra accessible in major care places of work, emergency rooms, correctional, reentry, and homeless outreach settings.
On the conclusion of the summit, individuals agreed on key actions to deal with the continued fentanyl disaster, together with:
- Making a multi-city job pressure that can meet once more earlier than the top of the 12 months;
- Drafting a complete plan outlining nationwide finest practices and alternatives;
- Increasing data-sharing to the nationwide stage to make sure correct and well timed coordination round lab and overdose knowledge;
- Figuring out and securing metropolis, state, and nationwide funding and legislative wants to forestall overdose deaths and save lives,
- Growing neighborhood outreach methods to higher perceive behavioral dynamics related to drug abuse, and
- Taking steps to cut back the stigma round habit and substance abuse in order that these affected by habit can get assist earlier than it’s too late.
All of us got here away from this summit with a renewed dedication to cease the stream of fentanyl into our cities, maintain unhealthy actors accountable, and spend money on evidence-based interventions that shield New Yorkers and all People from this harmful drug.
We can not sit again and let what occurred to prior generations occur to our infants and households. We can not repeat the errors that have been made that led to the epidemics of heroin within the Nineteen Sixties and crack cocaine within the Nineteen Eighties.
I used to be working as a police officer through the Nineteen Eighties, and I noticed how crack devastated our communities as a result of the sources weren’t there. We should do every thing in our energy to confront — and defeat —the fentanyl disaster. Meaning training, which means therapy, and which means enforcement.
The summit reminded us that we’re at all times stronger and higher after we work collectively. I do know that, with our companions from throughout the nation, we are able to and we are going to scale back overdoses, save lives, and shield our youngsters and our communities.
