As his tenure as mayor of the Big Apple nears its close, Bill de Blasio achieved one more objective of his before leaving office: opening the first-in-the-nation legal shooting galleries for drug addicts.
On the very first day of the clinics being opened, five people overdosed at just one clinic, but de Blasio said the centers are a good thing.
“Overdose Prevention Centers are a safe and effective way to address the opioid crisis,” de Blasio claimed. “I’m proud to show cities in this country that after decades of failure, a smarter approach is possible.”
According to the NYC Health Department, the sites will provide clean needles and social services, but users must bring their own drugs.
The first two sites to open are in Washington Heights and Harlem, where 5 people overdosed after injecting themselves with drugs laced with fentanyl.
Over 2,000 New Yorkers died of drug overdoses in 2020, the most since overdose tracking began in 2000. Opioids are the culprit in the majority of overdoses.
Between January and March of 2021, 596 people have died due to addiction, and city officials claim the new legal injection sites could save over 100 people a year.
Rep. Nicole Malliotakis has called on the Department of Justice to block the sites, noting that the DOJ under President Trump said the sites violate the federal Controlled Substances Act.
“Instead of focusing on the root cause of the drug epidemic, Mayor de Blasio is enabling drug cartels that continue to break our laws, smuggle illegal drugs over our border, and prey on our children,” Malliotakis said.
“Crime and fentanyl use are at record highs because of open borders, botched bail reform, and anti-police policies that keep releasing criminal drug dealers back onto our streets. Opening taxpayer-funded heroin shooting galleries is not a proper solution. These centers not only encourage drug use but they will further deteriorate our quality of life,” she added.
(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)
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9 Responses
Meh… Seems these sites don’t increase drug use or crime and may have beneficial impacts.
If these places were (1) limited to severe drug addicts who (2)would also not be taking drugs elsewhere maybe it would have merit.
Realistically speaking it is just another liberal attempt to encourage and normalize illegal drug use
technically de blasio is violating federal law but since the local federal prosectuor Williams was appointed by Schumer he is giving him a break.
As if the typical druggie is going to think “which subway do I take to get to drug place to make sure I’m taking it safely?”
OTOH wait until some guy’s family claims he overdosed at one of those places and died . The city will be making mufti million dollar payouts in the lawsuits. Much of that money of course will be spent on drugs
Am I really reading such an article like this so beyond retarded why is it that the most craziest people hold public offices and make such a ludicrous laws
And nabach the New Yorker is who have to pay for this out of their tax money
At face value, this looks like a horrible thing but when you look at the data, specifically Sweden, where this model was initially introduced, something like 90% of the drug users recovered through this method. B’kitzur, the result was less crime, less drug overdoses and helping users rebuild their life instead of having to turn to drugs.
Am I reading this right? What has the world come to? This must be a bad dream. Blasio might get away with murder here, but he will never escape hell. What an antihuman piece of evil rotten filth.
Next will be legal batei zonos, also paid for by our tax dollars. I can not believe people are defending this idiocy. ADAMS, close this down immediately.