Bronx Borough President Vanessa L Gibson sounded the alarm about the opioid crisis in the Bronx at a city council hearing Tuesday, which addressed how the city was allocating money to prevent drug use.
Gibson called for more funds to be allocated for mobile units to care for drug users in the Bronx; Naloxone training for residents and caregivers; and an Overdose Prevention Center like those in East Harlem and Washington Heights.
“The Bronx cannot wait,” Gibson said. “We need this funding now. Every life lost to this epidemic is a life that could be saved, but we must take immediate action.”
The hearing focused on how the city is spending money it started getting in 2022 from the Opioid Settlement Fund, which was established after New York Attorney General Letitia James won a series of lawsuits against drug companies.
The money was intended to fund treatment, recovery and prevention programs as the opioid crisis raged on, but the city has allegedly not accounted for where millions of dollars have been spent, leading to widespread criticism from oversight officials demanding to see the receipts.
New York City has secured $154 million from settlements with pharmaceutical companies linked to the opioid crisis, with more expected. A newly announced settlement with Purdue Pharma and the Sackler family could bring an additional $250 million to New York state, some of which may be directed to the city.
The Opioid Settlement Fund Advisory Board, which was established following the legal settlements, has expressed concerns that the money wasn’t going to the communities being devastated by the opioid crisis, like many neighborhoods in the Bronx.
Gibson agreed, calling for greater transparency and equity in how those funds are spent, noting that the rate of overdose deaths in her borough, far outpaces the rest of the city.
“We cannot erase or ignore years of health injustices in our communities, but we can undo them,” Gibson said. “While we have seen sporadic increases in enforcement from NYPD and the Department of Sanitation, we must see a more consistent response from the city.”
Part of that solution, she said, could be an Overdose Prevention Center in the Bronx.
The city launched the nation’s first supervised consumption site in 2021 with OnPoint NYC in East Harlem and Washington Heights. The sites allow people to bring their own drugs into a safe, clean facility with trained professionals that can step in when a person overdoses. Since they opened, OnPoint NYC said it has intervened in nearly 1,700 overdoses.
But the sites have polarized New Yorkers, with critics saying supervised injection sites condone illegal drug use and attract more dealers and people who use drugs to the neighborhoods where they are located. Supporters claim that the Overdose Prevention Centers keep people who use drugs safe while reducing the amount of drug use out in the open, something the Bronx struggles to control in areas like the HUB which has seen public drug use in the busy commercial corridor for months.