The city will study whether to set up sites for drug addicts to shoot up safely with $100,000 approved by the City Council Wednesday.
The controversial program known as supervised injection facilities gives addicts a place to use drugs under medical supervision to avoid overdoses or spreading HIV and other diseases.
The study, which will be done by the Health Department, “will assess the feasibility and impact of NYC having a program that provides a safe, clean haven to high-risk, vulnerable New Yorkers and will help prevent drug overdoses and disease transmissions,” said Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito.
The money comes from $5.6 million approved to fight AIDS in the current city budget.
I can't wait for the siting hearings for this bright idea!
19 comments:
There are supervised injection sites in other countries and they seem to work well, with a benefit to drug users and residents (more info here, and on the links on this page: http://www.druginfo.adf.org.au/topics/supervised-injecting-facilities)
The one thing that I think needs to happen in NYC is locating these services in a remote area (maybe Rat's Island), not in the middle of a residential community, as would likely be the case here.
We have the greatest drug epidemic in history, with over FIFTY THOUSAND OVERDOSE DEATHS IN A YEAR!
So our brilliant City Council Can Members look to condone the behavior.
Thank goodness we have these people leading us with the most incredible solution for this problem!
Can we get some funding to pay for the drugs also?
I am sure that would cut down on crimes committed by the junkies.
This sounds like the best idea EVER!!!
Long Live "Hamsterdam"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BoiJRKwiC1Y
Normally I support these types of social programs instead of locking people up for years on trumped up possession charges. But because of the lack of hospitals, the predatory developers, sinister hoteliers, and our incompetent and corrupt elected officials (the gentrification industrial complex) this will enable their habits more and cause more crime, petty and violent.
I wonder what percentage of the city's 60,000 homeless are junkies. Or more important, imported and transplanted junkies.
And of course it will be in Queens with all the electeds you vote for your interests, as usual, remaining quiet.
One party state will do that to you every time.
No one wants a magnet for classes of people strongly correlated with higher levels of crime. SIS advocates point to a couple of studies in Vancouver and Sydney that these centers have no impact, but that's in part because they're built in areas already with high drug use. Building these places in areas not currently plagued with many addicts is another thing entirely. Also not addressed is that these places offer an open market place for dealer/users to hook addicts onto harder drugs, and the medical staff has a hands-off approach to detox services. Whatever happened to methadone administered at a hospital?
This plan would have taxpayers pay for: police/security, legal, medical, housing, hospital, etc to take care of these druggies. What is happening to our city????!!
How is this different than handing out condoms to rapists?
They have needle deposit boxes inside the bathrooms at Greely and Herald square...
It's no mystery what people are doing.
No one is condoning the behavior. The status quo isn't working so the city is trying to pilot another approach they may better help drug users.
I'm not going to start using heroine not that there is an injection site. But it will get people out of the McDonald's bathroom or the alley or the street couner.
>>So our brilliant City Council Can Members look to condone the behavior.
So they come in with their dime bag and have a health care professional clean their arm and help them find a vein?
What a waste of our tax dollars. I would support the Brooklyn-Queens streetcar before this?
I recently had 2 back surgeries and get a prescription for 60 hydrocodone a month,2 a day for pain,it's being cut off,pharmacy says it's a new Federal law,WTF?,I've worked 30 years breaking my back and some junkie gets better treatment than me who probably never worked a day in their lives
WHAT IS WRONG WITH THIS COUNTRY?
The jump in heroin use is thanks to the government making it nearly impossible for anyone, even those suffering from injuries or chronic pain, to get painkillers. Now innocent people like the above commentator are forced to live in agony, while addicts have moved from Percocet and Vicodin pills to much more dangerous - but easier to get - heroin.
And now the government, to rectify this problem they created, want to give those junkies safe places to inject. Might as well just give them the pills, and skip the needles altogether.
How does promoting addiction benefit anyone?
I guess that Heroin, being cheaper than weed these days, is the way to go.
Method one must also cost more.
Let's keep New Yorkers somatized. We need it.
Correction...Methodone.
It would make sense that a facility would be in a hospital being that using heroin is dangerous and people can die. Heroin is cut with all kinds of crap and users never know the strength until it's too late.I'm a senior and have seen many people I hung around with ruin their lives and even die from hard drugs.I never gave into hard drugs and pills and stayed with grass.I say stay away from white powders and anything you have to inject.This is a serious medical problem,not a criminal one.
>How does promoting addiction benefit anyone?
Have you ever heard of "harm reduction"?
Better live junkies than ones dead of overdoses or spreading AIDS with dirty needles.
Here we go again -- another scam. First, its shelters disguised as hotels, then cutting off the supply of heroin and heavy-duty painkillers replaced with "pain management clinics".
Now we will have "supervised injection facilities" -- facilities that will give addicts a place to use drugs under medical supervision to avoid overdoses or spreading HIV and other diseases.
Are they serious? What are these politicians smoking, injecting or popping? What part of Queens will they be in? You know it won't be in Brooklyn or Manhattan. Will they get subway and bus fare? Do you really think addicts will want to wait to get to a facility just to shoot up? Or, while travelling to a facility will an addict stop to think about having safe sex? Hello? Anybody home?
This whole idea IS luidcrous BUT follow the money.
I worked in the financial department of the grand daddy of all harm reduction it's a huge scam. Money is laundered through these places as we would get anonymous donations of cash all the time. George Soros/Open Society puts a lot of money into harm reduction. The Robin Hood Foundation does too. NYS Dept of Health and NYC Dept of Health are some of the other funders. Our tax dollars support this crap, this farce.
The indigent intravenous drug users do not want to get clean/sober. They want to use heroin and get prescription drugs to sell outside methadone clinics. How do they get these drugs? Their mediciad pays for the prescription and they sell them. The agency that I worked for gave a monthly stipend to the participants for their volunteer work. Half the time they did nothing. If I asked the volunteer who was supposed to clean our office, to do something ,he would scream and yell and curse.
There's two ways that the junkies got money to pay for the drugs, so yes our tax dollar is paying for their heroin. I'm sure there are more scams I forgot about.
I made sure that all participants getting stipends had check cashing cards from our bank so they could cash the checks for free. But no, as soon as they had their monthly stipend check, they lined up at the nearest check cashing place and bought bags of heroin.
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