NEW YORK IS NO. 4 IN THE NATION FOR FENTANYL DEATHS

Why won’t New York pols fight the opioid epidemic? 

 

Editorial Board

 

NEW York Post

February 12, 2022

 

 

 

Over 30 pounds of suspected heroin and hundreds of fentanyl pills were seized at a Bronx packaging mill last year 

 

 

New York hit another grim milestone in 2021: No. 4 in the nation for fentanyl deaths. 

The ugly number comes from a report by a fentanyl-focused nonprofit using CDC data to chart the drug’s terrible toll: It’s been involved in close to 14,500 Empire State deaths since 2015, per the report — with a 486% increase over that span. 

The bad news doesn’t stop there. Some 29,000 Americans aged 15 to 34 died in 2020 from drug overdoses, reports the CDC. And that’s majorly driven by fentanyl, with fentanyl-specific ODs outpacing those from prescription opioids by more than 550%. 

In that same year, the first of the pandemic, COVID killed around 3,100 in that age group. 

That is: The data show the epidemic of overdoses is vastly more deadly for the young than the coronavirus pandemic. It also hits vulnerable groups, like Native Americans and black Americans, the hardest. 

 

      A man stands outside of a safe-injection site in New York City. Safe injection sites were opened across the city in the hopes to curb overdoses

 

Did you notice any breathless, death-by-death, day-by-day coverage of overdose fatalities splashed across front pages nationwide? We saw none before COVID, and certainly not after.

Where is the outrage? The society-wide effort to curb this epidemic?

And some “leaders” made it worse. These numbers cast the “safe injection sites” then-Mayor Bill de Blasio set up in a new light. 

While there are fentanyl testing kits onsite at these places, color us skeptical they’re catching all the tainted drugs. De Blasio’s record on public health is terrible. And the NYPD found that more than 80% of the heroin it tested contained fentanyl at the end of 2020.

Yes, the sites are also stocked with anti-overdose drugs. But they are in the end still enabling people’s addiction. And they’re not, as de Blasio claimed, an “effective way to fight the opioid epidemic.” They’re a rearguard action at best.

Furthermore: if COVID is dangerous enough to young people that restaurants, gyms and schools needed to be shut and faces masked everywhere, there’s no possible justification for the sites. No matter how “safe.” The opioid epidemic is killing more youngsters than COVID ever did.

Having Mayor Eric Adams shut down the shooting galleries would be a good first step here.

The law-and-order right and the woke left can’t agree on much. But putting a stop to the fentanyl crisis should qualify.