NEW YORK — The first officially legal shelters for others with heroin and other narcotics have been allowed to open in hopes of combating overdoses, the mayor and fitness commissioner said Tuesday.
“Overdose prevention centers,” known as supervised injection sites, have been debated for years in New York and other U. S. cities. USA And they exist in Canada, Australia and Europe.
Some unofficial amenities have operated in the city, allowing addicts to have a guarded place.
Supporters said the amenities save lives by recognizing the truth of drug use and offering a position where users are monitored for overdose symptoms, which led to a record number of lives in the city and countryside last year.
“I’m proud to show cities across this country that after decades of failure, it’s possible to get smarter,” Mayor Bill de Blasio said in a statement.
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Federal prohibits the operation of a drug-use stand.
Last month, the U. S. Supreme Court refused to resume a Philadelphia group’s fight to open a supervised injection site, which a split federal appeal rejected.
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New York City sites opened Tuesday as part of needle exchange programs, the city’s fitness commissioner, Dave Chokshi, said.
These sites regularly have monitors that can administer an antidote in the event of an overdose. Chokshi warned that the services would offer referrals to other people to remedy addictions and other centers and “bring other people from the streets, thus improving the lives of everyone involved. “. “
More than 2,060 other people died of overdoses last year in the nation’s most populous city, the highest number since reports began in 2000. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated there were more than 93,300 overdose deaths nationwide in 2020, an increase of nearly 30 percent from last year’s emission.