Just over a year after New York City led the nation in establishing two overdose prevention centers to serve people at risk of falling to a continuing epidemic of opioid abuse, not only have no additional facilities opened, the existing ones are now at risk of closing. The centers, run by nonprofit OnPoint, could run out of money by next month. This is as clear a public policy failure as you can get.
State officials made the wrong call in opposing the disbursement of opioid settlement funds for the centers, a comical stance given that the purpose of the fund is explicitly to assist those suffering from opioid abuse, and there’s hardly a more proven strategy than overdose prevention, a tactic that is quite literally about stopping deaths.
They claim that the operations are illegal, which is undeniable, but federally so is cannabis, an industry that the state just launched to much fanfare. Surely this is not an insurmountable problem, and the Legislature should move without delay to implement the state opioid settlement board’s sensible recommendations over silly objections.
In the meantime, though, if the funding need really is urgent, it is nothing less than critical for public health for the centers to be given operational runway and avoid shutdown. Here, the city or various foundations and philanthropic groups could step in with short-term grants, with the expectation that the state will do its part.
Even if the centers were able to reopen later, there’s really no other way to say this than to point out that every week that the centers are out of commission can probably be measured in lives lost, not only in terms of the people who might die without trained staff around to save their lives, but people who won’t be funneled to other services like medication-assisted treatment. These might not save them in the moment, but could be the critical point that heads off a fatal overdose later, or more generally gets them back on track to a healthier life.
