New York City wants to have five new ‘safe injection’ sites by 2025

New York City wants to have five “safe” drug injection sites up and running by 2025 – even though the Empire State is experiencing an all-time high in recorded drug overdoses. 

Mayor Eric Adams’ proposal would add three of the facilities to neighborhoods like the South Bronx, where addicts can bring their own drugs and use clean needles to shoot up under the watch of medical professionals. 

It’s part of a multi-part plan to address mental health and rising overdose deaths, a key tenet of Adams’ second year in office. 

“We must ramp up our efforts to prevent fatal overdoses, and get treatment to people who need it. This plan would expand proven harm reduction in treatment strategies with the goal of reducing overdose deaths in New York City by 15 percent by 2025,” he said Thursday during a City Hall-based press conference.

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“Saving lives, dreams, and families. We’re going to increase the availability of overdose reversal drugs, especially in high-risk areas, provide more medication for opioids use disorder, as well as clean syringes and other safety supplies, and reduce the risk of overdose by expanding the distribution of fentanyl test strips, that will alert users to dangerous levels of the drugs, before it’s too late.”

If approved, City Hall’s plan would add to the two nonprofit-run centers already up and running – the  New York Harm Reduction Educators on E. 126th Street in Harlem and Washington Heights’ CORNER Project on W. 180th Street – which opened under former Mayor Bill de Blasio, a proponent of relaxing laws governing drug use.

But sanctioned drug use at the so-called “safe injection” is still illegal under state and federal law, barring the current sites from receiving government funding to operate. 

Overdose deaths have been at an all-time high in the state – the vast majority due to fentanyl deaths – and New York accounts for a higher percentage of fatalities.

The city Department of Health and Mental Hygiene released a report last month that found 2,668 overdose deaths in 2021, compared with 2,103 in 2020. Fentanyl was found in 80 percent of drug overdose deaths in the Big Apple in 2021.

The sites have drawn ire from local officials – including Staten Island’s Democratic District Attorney Michael McMahon – who argue the locations harm addicts rather than promote recovery. 

“Staten Island is having a real overdose problem. And so we are going to sit down with the DA. I think DA McMahon is an excellent district attorney. We’re going to sit down. We are going to show them the numbers,” said Adams.  

City Hall will also add a new telehealth and suicide prevention program for high schoolers and expand a program that adds more medical professionals to respond to mental health-related emergency calls.