Advocates for safe drug use laid 19 body bags outside Gov. Kathy Hochul’s Manhattan offices on Aug. 26, calling it a display illustrating daily overdose deaths statewide.
The action also included a symbolic funeral march for those lives lost across Third Avenue as International Overdose Awareness Day loomed on Aug. 31. Participants from organizations like Drug Policy Alliance, Housing Works and VOCAL-New York demanded for more harm reduction policies like overdose prevention sites and less criminalization.
VOCAL-New York drug policy campaign coordinator Steven Gray says the protest organized people directly impacted by drug use laws and services.
“Black and Brown New Yorkers are dying at the highest rates,” they said. “And again, Hochul says that she has a coordinated plan to respond to the overdose crisis and yet we see that can’t be the case when more than 19 New Yorkers continue to die every day. We’re seeing the governor propose and double down on the drug war.
“We are demanding leadership and we are literally saying with this display of body bags that our loved ones continue to die, our community members continue to die without a coordinated response from [Hochul] and bringing that directly to her doorstep.”
Protesters specifically called for more overdose prevention centers in the wake of non-government funding as a possible source. Opioid settlements against pharmaceutical and consulting companies secured by New York Attorney General Letitia James yielded more than $2.6 billion and go “towards New York communities for treatment, recovery and prevention efforts.”
Legally, the settlements cannot “supplant or replace existing state funding” because of a unanimous bill passed in 2021. A board established by the legislation recommended using the settlement money towards establishing overdose prevention centers statewide.
Hochul pushed back on the recommendation last November, citing legal reasons. The nation’s first two overdose prevention centers both opened in Upper Manhattan three years ago under former Mayor Bill de Blasio’s watch. However, such services aren’t approved by New York State as they technically would be in violation of federal law.
Yet despite the Biden administration’s oversight, open knowledge of their existence, and other states authorizing similar centers, the city’s overdose prevention centers continue to operate without enforcement. The New York State Department of Health can legalize such services through emergency regulations, permitting an authority to sanction syringe exchange services as an HIV prevention measure. The organizers add that Hochul can also use executive actions to approve overdose prevention centers on a state-level.
Overdose prevention centers provide sterile paraphernalia and allow people to bring their own drugs to use under medical supervision. The sites also connect clients to services under their own volition. While relatively new to the United States, the sites are a tried-and-true harm reduction strategy in Europe.
No overdose death has ever been recorded at an overdose prevention center, according to the National Institutes of Health. So the organizers blame Hochul’s poor response for the roughly 19 or more overdose deaths daily across the state, which they see as preventable under safe use practices.
Protester James Velez says he moved from New Jersey to New York to access the overdose prevention site in Washington Heights.
“People [don’t] usually look at drug use like a sick person,” said Velez. “Just like people got cancer, people under the influence of drugs and alcohol have a disease. It’s called addiction and they have no control of it…and it affects everybody and anybody. People with cancer don’t get stigmatized—cursed at and yell[ed] at.”
On a city level, statewide support would increase overdose prevention center funding access to the other four boroughs. Last year, Mayor Eric Adams’s mental health plan aimed to create “legal pathways to operate and fund overdose prevention centers.”
New York City’s two overdose prevention centers—located in East Harlem and Washington Heights—are privately funded, although the operating nonprofit OnPoint NYC does receive state funding for other programs. Settlement payout backing would allow the two sites to open around-the-clock, says executive director Sam Rivera.
“Every day, our team has to deal with the pain and the trauma of closing our doors every night, which is very stressful to us and more importantly, stressful to our participants who have nowhere to go,” he said over the phone. “Operating an OPC 24 hours a day also means that people have a space to go 24 hours a day…it is very difficult for us to constantly squeeze dollars out of wherever we can squeeze dollars from [by asking] the same few foundations and individuals to step up and support us to keep beautiful New Yorkers alive.
“Throughout the country, people are celebrating New York for this model for all the peoples’ lives we’re saving and all the work we’re doing, but [Hochul] hasn’t stepped up and done her part. And the [settlement] money is for us. The money is specifically for people who are using opioids, people using drugs, and keeping these people alive.”
Expanding OnPoint NYC’s overdose prevention centers could also offer a solution for the services’ opponents, who say the sites are a factor in rising crime and open drug use – though research does not support such assertions.
“When the community says they didn’t want drug use in the community, they didn’t want paraphernalia [and] they didn’t want their children to see all of these activities, we agreed,” Rivera said. “We don’t want that in the street either…if [Hochul] gave us the money to open 24 hours a day, all of these folks who are outside in the middle of the night, freezing or too hot, [would] be inside with us, spending time with us. Not all of them would only be using the OPC. They would be using other services.”
Meanwhile, Hochul’s administration touted an estimated 9% reduction in overdose deaths statewide excluding New York City from March 2023 to March 2024. The Governor’s Office points to distributing around 700,000 narcan kits and 20 million fentanyl and xylazine testing strips as well as establishing outpatient programs.
More than $335 million in settlement money has been redirected towards recovery services and harm reduction, including distributing more than $100 million across local governments to tackle overdoses on a municipal level.
“Our administration is engaged in aggressive, ongoing efforts to address the opioid and overdose epidemic, which has tragically taken far too many neighbors, friends and family members in New York and across the nation,” a spokesperson for Hochul said in an email to AmNews. “Our efforts are making an impact, as recently released federal data showed that overdose deaths are declining across New York – and we’re working every day to keep deploying the resources that save lives and ensure New Yorkers struggling with addiction get the support they need.”
But Drug Policy Alliance New York State Director Toni Smith told the AmNews during the rally that there is a tendency to “move on to other priorities” when overdose data shows improvement.
“We are here to say this crisis is not abating in the most impacted communities,” said Smith. “It’s not abating for Black, Brown [and] Indigenous New Yorkers. It’s not abating for New Yorkers who are unhoused or unsafely housed or sheltered. There are sensible [and] practical solutions that are possible that we are asking for—overdose prevention centers [are] one solution that [are] widely supported and evidence based that Gov. Hochul has rejected.”
The numbers related to the 19 body bag count are unofficial and stem from a very rough estimate. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) uniquely tallies New York City and New York state overdose deaths separately. The national health agency also lists both officially reported and predicted estimate numbers due to a lag from state vital registration offices.
The organizers use the estimated count from December 2022 to December 2023 between both city and state, which totals 6,553 or roughly 18 deaths a day. A 19th body bag accounts for any additional underreporting, including suspected overdose deaths in New York City that weren’t confirmed by an autopsy due to medical examiner staffing shortages.
International Overdose Awareness Day started in Australia back in 2001 and lands each year on Aug. 31.
Tandy Lau is a Report for America corps member who writes about public safety for the Amsterdam News. Your donation to match our RFA grant helps keep him writing stories like this one; please consider making a tax-deductible gift of any amount today by visiting https://bit.ly/amnews1.