PrintNew York City officials fund ads describing opioid use as 'empowering'
The New York City Department of Health kicked off a new campaign, with advertisements displayed across the subway transit system. However, this taxpayer-funded project is quite the opposite of what you'd expect from a city health department — or maybe not, given the fact that it appeared in the liberal enclave of Manhattan. The ads sought to characterize debilitating opioid addictions as "empowering."
The health department did not offer resources for substance abuse, or addiction treatment, but instead delineated how to be an empowered and safe user, saying:
Avoid using alone and take turns
Start with a small dose and go slowly
Have naloxone on hand
Avoid mixing drugs
Test your drugs using fentanyl test strip
This public campaign comes on the heels of the city taxpayers funding "safe injection sites" — locations where addicts can ingest or inject their illicit drugs under the eye of a paid medical professional, someone who is trained to prevent and treat overdoses. It should not surprise anyone that facilitating junkie behavior leads to an exacerbated issue. Just three days ago, the Daily Mail published an article on the regressive direction of New York life amid the rising drug issues — outside a popular market in East Harlem, homeless men injected opiates into their feet and arms in the middle of the sidewalk in broad daylight — just blocks from three separate schools.
Joe Borelli, a New York City councilman, castigated the health department advertisements, calling them "twisted."
No, @nycHealthy, heroin addiction is not empowering
— Joe Borelli (@JoeBorelliNYC) May 27, 2022
This is the opposite of “harm reduction.” This normalizes injecting deadly life-changing drugs
“avoid using alone” 🤔
“Start w small doses” 👀
“Using safely” 😳
This is twisted
Did you approve this @NYCHealthCommr? pic.twitter.com/YW3BT1km60
On May 27, Fox News aired a segment where they hosted two fathers who had lost their children to fentanyl. The fathers formed a "fentanyl awareness coalition" in order to educate others on the reality of the dangers of fentanyl and how pervasive the problem truly is. The opioid epidemic is amplified by the addition of fentanyl, and one organization is taking the campaign to Joe Biden. From a Fox News article:
Families against Fentanyl, an organization raising awareness about the dangers of the deadly synthetic opioid, are asking the Biden Administration to count fentanyl poisoning and overdose deaths the same way it counted COVID-19 deaths.
According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, deaths by synthetic opioids skyrocketed in the year 2020 — up past 60,000 deaths for the year.
Unfortunately, overdoses encouraged by Democrat policies aren't politically useful, so we are unlikely to see any meaningful action.
