Gov. Hochul needs to declare state emergency over NY opioid deaths: Staten Island pols

Gov. Kathy Hochul needs to declare a public health emergency to address the Empire State’s worsening opioid crisis , a bipartisan Staten Island task force urged Wednesday. The group — co chaired by Democratic District Attorney Mike McMahon and Republican Borough President Vito Fossella — issued more than a dozen recommendations as part of what it dubbed a 21st Century “Marshall Plan” to curb overdose deaths.

The report called on Hochul and the state Legislature to stiffen penalties for peddlers of the deadly drugs and tighten bail laws, as well as boost harm reduction, education and addiction prevention funding. “The fentanyl crisis is the challenge of our lifetimes …. Frankly, if this many Americans died of any other cause, a full scale response would have commenced long ago,” said McMahon, who created the 54 member borough task force after Hochul vetoed legislation to set up a statewide group to address the opioid crisis in 2022.

“This epidemic warrants a Marshall Plan approach,” the report said, referring to the program to rebuild western Europe after World War II. Approximately 5,300 New Yorkers died from opioid related overdoses in 2022, a 5.6% increase from 2021 and up 20% from the 4,233 such deaths tallied in 2020, according to state figures.

On Staten Island last year, it is projected that more than 150 people died of overdoses — up from 94 in 2019. There have been more than 830 OD fatalities in the borough since 2016, the report said. Overdose deaths had leveled off on Staten Island until fentanyl — the deadly synthetic opioid 50 to 100 times more powerful than morphine — arrived on the scene, McMahon said.

Over the past two years, fentanyl — which is developed in labs in China and funneled through Mexico — was present in 80% of OD deaths compared to 2% a decade ago. Some 111,000 Americans died from opioid overdoses between April 2022 and April 2023 — and the OD rate has more than quadrupled since 2000, the report noted.

Eight other states — including neighboring Massachusetts and Pennsylvania, as well as Florida — have declared health emergencies over the opioid epidemic, enabling their governments to bypass procurement rules and speed up funding, similar to during the COVID pandemic, the report said. The report urged the federal government to curb the fentanyl pipeline manufactured mostly in China and produced in Mexico and called for more regional law enforcement coordination to disrupt supplies.

It called on New York pols to tighten the state’s cashless bail law to include A2 and B level felony drug cases as bail eligible offenses. “When bail reform took effect in 2020 it stripped prosecutor’s ability to request bail in all felony drug cases except those where an A 1 charge was included,” the report said.

Other recommendations included adding xylazine, the animal sedative commonly known as “Tranq,” to the controlled substance list so the NYPD can test for it, while loosening “impossible timelines” in the discovery law that hinders drug prosecutions. It also said more funding was needed for education and addiction treatment — but drew the line on backing supervised “safe” drug injection sites, also known as overdose prevention sites, which McMahon opposes .

Hochul’s office on Wednesday defended her approach to addressing the opioid crisis, and stopped short of declaring an emergency. “As one of the millions of Americans who lost a loved one to overdose, Governor Hochul is committed to aggressively tackling the opioid crisis and has invested a historic $2.8 billion in addiction services since taking office,” said Hochul spokesman Avi Small.

“Governor Hochul will continue making smart, responsible investments to address the extraordinary scale of this crisis and deliver support to those who need it.” In her 2024 State of the State address, she also proposed updating the state’s controlled substances schedule and launched an education program to prevent xylazine from being diverted from legitimate veterinary uses.

She said her administration is increasing harm reduction efforts in underserved communities by expanding access to buprenorphine fentanyl, xylazine test strips and naloxone medication and launching anti stigma campaign about opioid abuse..