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Inside the NYC supervised drug-use sites focusing on harm reduction · INSIGHT TODAY

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  Speaker 1: Remember this scene from the Knicks Championship parade in New
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: York City. Aman appeared to have overdosed on that structure.
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: And this is Simone Kelly. She's an EMT who gave
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  Speaker 1: him n alock zone that might have saved his life.
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  Speaker 1: We don't know what he might have taken that day,
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  Speaker 1: but the response is an example of harm reduction, which
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  Speaker 1: happens often at on Point, NYC, where I met her.
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  Speaker 1: It's one of the only places in the country where
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  Speaker 1: anyone can walk in, register and shoot up heroin.
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  Speaker 2: I saw what On Point was doing about a year ago,
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  Speaker 2: and I was just so excited for the opportunities that
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  Speaker 2: came from it.
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  Speaker 3: We have a real epidemic going on.
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  Speaker 1: Kelly, and I got a tour of On Point from
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  Speaker 1: director Sam Rivera.
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  Speaker 3: Yabe all for that to one place, not something we
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  Speaker 3: wanted to kind of like people like you want to
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  Speaker 3: be a one stop shot, not something to try to do,
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  Speaker 3: but often sions find ourselves having to do so.
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  Speaker 1: He himself did time in the eighties for dealing drugs,
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  Speaker 1: and he sees his role now as giving love to
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  Speaker 1: people who don't usually get any dignity in their daily lives.
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  Speaker 2: So yeah, We've seen many, many We've served thousands of people.
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  Speaker 3: We've seen hundreds of people come through the program, come
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  Speaker 3: into the OPC, use the OPC and then either reduced
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  Speaker 3: it you so stop totally. A number of them are
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  Speaker 3: working for us right now. We're really excited about that.
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  Speaker 3: Others move on and work for other organizations specific to
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  Speaker 3: the OPC.
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  Speaker 2: We have a little over seven thousand registered participants.
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  Speaker 3: We've open four and a half years.
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  Speaker 2: In that time, we've had twenty one close to twenty
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  Speaker 2: one hundred overdoses with no deaths, which is pretty amazing.
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  Speaker 2: We're not surprised because that's what's happening. We've collected and
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  Speaker 2: it is a big one. Over five million units of
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  Speaker 2: hazardous waste. Hazardous waste that stays in the building, we get.
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  Speaker 3: To dispose of it correctly, never goes out to the street.
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  Speaker 3: Those seven thousand plus participants, in combining both sites have
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  Speaker 3: utilized the space more than two hundred and fifty thousand times.
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  Speaker 3: And what does that mean to the community is that
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  Speaker 3: two hundred and fifty thousand times people used inside with us,
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  Speaker 3: not in the parks, not in the street, not in
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  Speaker 3: the playgrounds, not in bathrooms, et cetera.
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  Speaker 1: On Point gets some funding from the city's Department of Health.
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  Speaker 1: In fact, Zorn Mamdani, the Mayor of New York City,
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  Speaker 1: visited in marsh and he got the same tour as
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  Speaker 1: I did.
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  Speaker 3: And so the services are free for all people.
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  Speaker 1: According to city rules, taxpayer dollars can't go directly to
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  Speaker 1: pay staff who oversee the drug use. Instead, it goes
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  Speaker 1: to other services, the medical care or the massage room
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  Speaker 1: that we saw, the art therapy, aroma therapy, acupuncture, hairstyling,
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  Speaker 1: and other things that are on offer. But we wanted
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  Speaker 1: to take a close look at the data. Does on
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  Speaker 1: Point release save lives? The answer is it's unclear. So
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  Speaker 1: the NIH is currently funding a study that is looking
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  Speaker 1: at the outcomes. And what they do is they give
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  Speaker 1: surveys to drug users and they look at nine to
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  Speaker 1: one one calls and what it looks like is that
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  Speaker 1: nine to one one calls and emergency room visits appear
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  Speaker 1: to decrease a little bit. But there's so many complicating
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  Speaker 1: factors that it's really hard to say. Now. I should
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  Speaker 1: note that while this is new to most Americans, there
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  Speaker 1: are over one hundred centers like this around the world.
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  Speaker 1: Canada was a big proponent. The first one opened up
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  Speaker 1: in Vancouver in two thousand and three, so there is
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  Speaker 1: good data around those, and essentially the research is unclear
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  Speaker 1: does it actually save lives. They do bring people in
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  Speaker 1: the door who might go in for medical care, they
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  Speaker 1: might get their drugs tested and find funtional and then
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  Speaker 1: not use when they otherwise would have. But when it
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  Speaker 1: comes to the actual mortality rates, the NIH's National Institute
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: on Drug Abuse found that after twenty years, while no
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  Speaker 1: one has been reported to have died inside any of
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  Speaker 1: the overdose prevention centers, it is quote unclear whether such
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  Speaker 1: facilities reduce overdose death rates overall end quote. Enter Charles
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  Speaker 1: fain Lehman, one of the loudest critics of overdose prevention
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  Speaker 1: centers from his perch at the conservative leaning Manhattan Institute
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  Speaker 1: think tank.
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  Speaker 4: I think that if they wanted to operate these facilities
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  Speaker 4: primarily as an Offerranford treatment, that would be great. I
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  Speaker 4: think it's somewhat hard to argue that that is what
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  Speaker 4: happens consistently, or many of these facilities don't do that
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  Speaker 4: consistence consistently. If you look at my analysis of on
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  Speaker 4: points data, small fractions of people who go through their facility,
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  Speaker 4: end up getting referred to anything that looks like maybe
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  Speaker 4: it's treatment. In the data that I looked at, they
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  Speaker 4: are particularly clear about what fraction of clients are getting
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  Speaker 4: referred to treatment.
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  Speaker 1: I went back to on Point to ask Sam Rivera
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  Speaker 1: about this, like a number, like.
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  Speaker 3: A full of people are many more than a handful literally,
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  Speaker 3: hundreds literally and maybe more, But I don't have any
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  Speaker 3: exact number.
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  Speaker 1: At the end of the day, regardless of the empirical data,
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  Speaker 1: people seem to be able to find whatever they were
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  Speaker 1: looking for in the same data, and most of the
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  Speaker 1: researchers that we spoke to largely funded by the NIH.
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  Speaker 1: They're big proponents of harm reduction and specifically of places
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  Speaker 1: like on Point