January, 25 2018, 10:00am EDT
Advocates Applaud NYPD Openness on "Safer Consumption Spaces" but Question City Hall's Inaction
In wake of Philadelphia's unified call for supervised injection facilities, advocates call for Mayor de Blasio to immediately release completed feasibility study on safer consumption spaces for NYC and implement report recommendations.
New York, NY
Yesterday, Commissioner James O'Neill's said that the NYPD was in conversation with NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene about the city implementing safer consumption spaces (also known as safe injection facilities) in response to the unrelenting overdose crisis. "This is about the sanctity of human life, keeping people safe, making sure that people stay alive," Police Commissioner James O'Neill commented, adding that the department is considering the issue thoughtfully but does not yet have a position. Advocates and people directly affected by the overdose crisis applaud commissioner and the NYPD for signaling their open mind on this issue, and for prioritizing saving lives.
The commissioner's comments and pressure from advocates come the day after officials in Philadelphia announced their plan to create Comprehensive User Engagement Sites (CUES), effectively creating safer consumption spaces there.
Advocates are calling on Mayor de Blasio to immediately release the final feasibility study on safer consumption spaces--commissioned by the city council and funded with $100,000--that City Hall has had since last fall. They also demand clear next steps for implementing safer consumption spaces in the city. Harm reduction-focused agencies across the city stand ready to implement safer consumption spaces swiftly in an effort to save lives right away and emphasize that they are a public health strategy that has been proven to reduce overdose deaths.
Safer consumption spaces (SCSs) are places where people can use pre-obtained drugs in a controlled environment with point-of-care support from staff trained to help participants to make their drug use safer, to prevent and to respond to overdoses, and to provide linkage to health and supportive services.
"The NYPD's willingness to work with the Department of Health to bring an innovative, life-saving public health intervention to New York City amid substantial increases in overdose deaths is exactly the sort of forward-thinking action that we need to prevent New Yorkers from dying unnecessarily of overdoses," said Kassandra Frederique, New York State director of the Drug Policy Alliance. "In a moment when New York State's overdose crisis continues to grow--with overdose deaths killing more New Yorkers than traffic accidents, homicides, and suicide combined--we need bold thinking and action."
"Mayor de Blasio made headlines this week when he joined a national effort and filed a lawsuit against manufacturers and distributors of opioid prescriptions. The truth is, that action was politically easy. If he wants to prove his progressive commitment to saving lives, he won't just release this report, he will take immediate action to create safer consumption spaces in New York City," said Jeremy Saunders, co-executive director of VOCAL-NY. "Despite an AIDS epidemic ravaging our city, syringe exchange was still illegal 25 years ago during the height of AIDS deaths. Any rational and compassionate politician today will admit that was a mistake. Mayor de Blasio's action will define how history will judge him."
Supporters of safer consumption spaces are also calling on Governor Cuomo and the New York State legislature to pass the Safe Consumption Services Act (A8534), which would allow health departments to authorize community-based organizations to establish safer consumption spaces.
"This has never been solely about drug consumption; we're calling for spaces that facilitate health and enable healing from trauma, stigma, and marginalization," said Daniel Raymond, Deputy Director of Planning and Policy at Harm Reduction Coalition. "Mayor De Blasio's leadership would send a strong signal of hope and compassion to people struggling with opioids and their loved ones, and a clear message to the nation that New York City has the political will to end the overdose crisis."
"We can't sit back any longer while our friends and loved ones die when we know there is more we could be doing, right now, to protect those most at risk," said Shantae Owens, a member of the advocacy group VOCAL New York. "The sooner New York allows safer consumption spaces, the more lives we'll save."
"If we want to save lives, reduce criminalization, and end racial disparities, we need comprehensive, innovative, and forward-thinking approaches like supervised injection facilities. New York City is in a unique position to step up and implement innovative drug policies rooted in science, compassion, and public health as we did with syringe exchanges before," said Kassandra Frederique. "It is the time for Mayor Bill de Blasio to lead the way in implementing drug policies that can succeed."
The Drug Policy Alliance is the nation's leading organization promoting drug policies grounded in science, compassion, health and human rights.
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UN Chief Warns of Israel's Syria Invasion and Land Seizures
United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres stressed the "urgent need" for Israel to "de-escalate violence on all fronts."
Dec 12, 2024
United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres said Thursday that he is "deeply concerned" by Israel's "recent and extensive violations of Syria's sovereignty and territorial integrity," including a ground invasion and airstrikes carried out by the Israel Defense Forces in the war-torn Mideastern nation.
Guterres "is particularly concerned over the hundreds of Israeli airstrikes on several locations in Syria" and has stressed the "urgent need to de-escalate violence on all fronts throughout the country," said U.N. spokesperson Stephane Dujarric.
Israel claims its invasion and bombardment of Syria—which come as the United States and Turkey have also violated Syrian sovereignty with air and ground attacks—are meant to create a security buffer along the countries' shared border in the wake of last week's fall of former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and amid the IDF's ongoing assault on Gaza, which has killed or wounded more than 162,000 Palestinians and is the subject of an International Court of Justice genocide case.
While Israel argues that its invasion of Syria does not violate a 1974 armistice agreement between the two countries because the Assad dynasty no longer rules the neighboring nation, Dujarric said Guterres maintains that Israel must uphold its obligations under the deal, "including by ending all unauthorized presence in the area of separation and refraining from any action that would undermine the cease-fire and stability in Golan."
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"Killing people is not the way we're going to reform our healthcare system," he said. "The way we're going to reform our healthcare system is having people come together."
Dec 12, 2024
Addressing the assassination of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson and conversations it has sparked about the country's for-profit system, longtime Medicare for All advocate Sen. Bernie Sanders on Wednesday condemned the murder and stressed that getting to universal coverage will require a movement challenging corporate money in politics.
"Look, when we talk about the healthcare crisis, in my view, and I think the view of a majority of Americans, the current system is broken, it is dysfunctional, it is cruel, and it is wildly inefficient—far too expensive," said Sanders (I-Vt.), whose position is backed up by various polls.
"The reason we have not joined virtually every other major country on Earth in guaranteeing healthcare to all people as a human right is the political power and financial power of the insurance industry and drug companies," he told Jacobin. "It will take a political revolution in this country to get Congress to say, 'You know what, we're here to represent ordinary people, to provide quality care to ordinary people as a human right,' and not to worry about the profits of insurance and drug companies."
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"What you're seeing, the outpouring of anger at the insurance companies, is a reflection of how people feel about the current healthcare system," he continued, noting the tens of thousands of Americans who die each year because they can't get to a doctor.
"Killing people is not the way we're going to reform our healthcare system," Sanders added. "The way we're going to reform our healthcare system is having people come together and understanding that it is the right of every American to be able to walk into a doctor's office when they need to and not have to take out their wallet."
"The way we're going to bring about the kind of fundamental changes we need in healthcare is, in fact, by a political movement which understands the government has got to represent all of us, not just the 1%," the senator told Jacobin.
The 83-year-old Vermonter, who was just reelected to what he says is likely his last six-year term, is an Independent but caucuses with Democrats and sought their presidential nomination in 2016 and 2020. He has urged the Democratic Party to recognize why some working-class voters have abandoned it since Republicans won the White House and both chambers of Congress last month. A refusal to take on insurance and drug companies and overhaul the healthcare system, he argues, is one reason.
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In addition to highlighting Sanders' interview on social media, Congressman Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) pointed out to Business Insider on Wednesday that "you've got thousands of people that are sharing their stories of frustration" in the wake of Thompson's death.
Khanna—a co-sponsor of the Medicare for All Act, led in the House of Representatives by Congressional Progressive Caucus Chair Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.)—made the case that you can recognize those stories without accepting the assassination.
"You condemn the murder of an insurance executive who was a father of two kids," he said. "At the same time, you say there's obviously an outpouring behavior of people whose claims are being denied, and we need to reform the system."
Two other Medicare for All advocates, Reps. Maxwell Frost (D-Fla.) and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), also made clear to Business Insider that they oppose Thompson's murder but understand some of the responses to it.
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Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.)—a co-sponsor of Sanders' Medicare for All Act—similarly toldHuffPost in a Tuesday interview, "The visceral response from people across this country who feel cheated, ripped off, and threatened by the vile practices of their insurance companies should be a warning to everyone in the healthcare system."
"Violence is never the answer, but people can be pushed only so far," she continued. "This is a warning that if you push people hard enough, they lose faith in the ability of their government to make change, lose faith in the ability of the people who are providing the healthcare to make change, and start to take matters into their own hands in ways that will ultimately be a threat to everyone."
After facing some criticism for those comments, Warren added Wednesday: "Violence is never the answer. Period... I should have been much clearer that there is never a justification for murder."
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"In Gaza, the scale of the tragedy is incomprehensible," wrote Thibaut Bruttin, director general of Reporters Without Borders.
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Reports released this week from two organizations that advocate for journalists underscore just how deadly Gaza has become for media workers.
Reporters Without Borders' (RSF) 2024 roundup, which was published Thursday, found that at least 54 journalists were killed on the job or in connection with their work this year, and 18 of them were killed by Israeli armed forces (16 in Palestine, and two in Lebanon).
The organization has also filed four complaints with the International Criminal Court "for war crimes committed by the Israeli army against journalists," according to the roundup, which includes stats from January 1 through December 1.
"In Gaza, the scale of the tragedy is incomprehensible," wrote Thibaut Bruttin, director general of RSF, in the introduction to the report. Since October 2023, 145 journalists have been killed in Gaza, "including at least 35 who were very likely targeted or killed while working."
Bruttin added that "many of these reporters were clearly identifiable as journalists and protected by this status, yet they were shot or killed in Israeli strikes that blatantly disregarded international law. This was compounded by a deliberate media blackout and a block on foreign journalists entering the strip."
When counting the number of journalists killed by the Israeli army since October 2023 in both Gaza and Lebanon, the tally comes to 155—"an unprecedented massacre," according to the roundup.
Multiple journalists were also killed in Pakistan, Bangladesh, Mexico, Sudan, Myanmar, Colombia, and Ukraine, according to the report, and hundreds more were detained and are now behind bars in countries including Israel, China, and Russia.
Meanwhile, in a statement released Thursday, the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) announced that at least 139 Palestinian journalists and media workers have been killed since the war in Gaza began in 2023, and in a statement released Wednesday, IFJ announced that 104 journalists had perished worldwide this year (which includes deaths from January 1 through December 10). IFJ's number for all of 2024 appears to be higher than RSF because RSF is only counting deaths that occurred "on the job or in connection with their work."
IFJ lists out each of the slain journalists in its 139 count, which includes the journalist Hamza Al-Dahdouh, the son of Al Jazeera's Gaza bureau chief, Wael Al-Dahdouh, who was killed with journalist Mustafa Thuraya when Israeli forces targeted their car while they were in northern Rafah in January 2024.
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