Mayor wants to open supervised injection facility for heroin in NY city

[flowers]

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2016/02/22/mayor-wants-to-open-supervised-injection-facility-for-heroin-in-ny-city.html?intcmp=hpbt4

One upstate New York city is planning an unconventional approach to combating a growing heroin epidemic: Letting addicts shoot up on government property under the supervision of medical professionals.

Ithaca Mayor Svante Myrick unveiled his controversial proposal to open a supervised injection facility during an interview with The Associated Press released Monday. The facility would provide a space for users to inject pre-purchased drugs with clean needles under the watchful eye of healthcare professionals who could, in theory, keep them safe and direct them to addiction services.
Related Image
FILE - In this Jan. 21, 2016 file photo, Ithaca, N.Y. Mayor Svante Myrick speaks during at the U.S. Conference of Mayors Winter Meeting in Washington. Myrick wants his city to become the first in the U.S. to offer heroin users a safe, controlled place to shoot up. Supervised injection sites, in which a trained medical professional is on hand to deal with overdoses, are already in operation in Europe and Canada, but the idea never gained acceptance in America's law-and-order approach to the war on drugs.(AP Photo/Cliff Owen, File) Expand / Contract

Mayor Svante Myrick speaks during the U.S. Conference of Mayors Winter Meeting in Washington. (AP)

"My father was a drug addict. He split from the family when I was 5, 6 years old," Myrick told the AP. "I have watched for 20 years this system that just doesn't work. We can't wait anymore for the federal government. We have people shooting up in alleys. In bathroom stalls. And too many of them are dying."

[Wingnut]

Texas has an express lane to the Death Chamber.
NY is going to mainline their way to it.   How liberal of them.

[Fishrrman]

[mountaineer]

"My father was a drug addict. He split from the family when I was 5, 6 years old," Myrick told the AP. "I have watched for 20 years this system that just doesn't work. We can't wait anymore for the federal government. We have people shooting up in alleys. In bathroom stalls. And too many of them are dying."

Yes, better for them to die on city property than in an alley or bathroom stall.

[flowers]

Yes, better for them to die on city property than in an alley or bathroom stall.

That way the city can get fees for removing the body. 

[17 Oaks]

Yes, better for them to die on city property than in an alley or bathroom stall.

Yea that way the family can sue and settle out of court for Millions....

[mountaineer]

You're both right.    ^-^

[flowers]

You're both right.    ^-^

Sadly we are.

[PzLdr]

Unless I'm mistaken, Heroin is a Class III Controlled substance, and illegal under both Federal and New York State Law [at least it was when I was a prosecutor. So, Mr. Mayor, how many counts of accessory to possession do you want to be indicted for?

[HonestJohn]

Unless I'm mistaken, Heroin is a Class III Controlled substance, and illegal under both Federal and New York State Law [at least it was when I was a prosecutor. So, Mr. Mayor, how many counts of accessory to possession do you want to be indicted for?

They'll probably be offering Methadone or Buprenorphine.

[17 Oaks]

Unless I'm mistaken, Heroin is a Class III Controlled substance, and illegal under both Federal and New York State Law [at least it was when I was a prosecutor. So, Mr. Mayor, how many counts of accessory to possession do you want to be indicted for?

Its the NEW America, politicians and judges are no longer bound by laws, but make up the law as they go...just be watching TV this am at 10:30 listen as the law is broken without impunity.

[katzenjammer]

Yes, I hear that the resident has delivered a "plan" to Congress this morning, and will be informing us of it, in about 5 minutes.

[Charlespg]

I don't have a Problem with this    ,Its long past time to end the stupidly of the drug war .
The over militarized  police ,The erosion of due process and the Bill of rights,The gangs and corruption . All because some folks want the government to protect people from their own stupidity

legalize the majority of drugs ,while having  a mandatory death penalty for manufacture,sale and disputation  of the really bad stuff like meth or bath salts

Have very severe penalties for operation under the influence
 And when someone dies of a overdose take their mug shot while their on the slab in the morgue  and put the pictures in the papers and on billboards at the end of each month  after a while most folks would get the message . As for the rest let Darwin run his coarse  Rather have drugs  in controlled areas then put with  the fascist ,banana republic nonsense that came with the drug war

[Charlespg]

Yea that way the family can sue and settle out of court for Millions....

Then slap them down and disbar their lawyer for filling a frivolous law suit

[truth_seeker]

I don't have a Problem with this    ,Its long past time to end the stupidly of the drug war .

Saw part of a 2012 film last night, called "The Anonymous People" which documented the history of substance addiction in the US.

I learned that medical science in 1956 dubbed alcoholism as a disease (not moral failure), and we were trending more and more towards treatment. People like Sen. Harold Hughes and Dick Van Dyke has revealed their alcoholism, etc.

But next came the War on Drug under Nixon and then Reagan. Gone was any talk of Disease, Rehabilitaion or treatment.

Now 60 years after 1956 many of us have rediscovered the idea of treatment, not incarceration. It is non-partisan, and many religious faiths also now follow that path. 

[katzenjammer]

Saw part of a 2012 film last night, called "The Anonymous People" which documented the history of substance addiction in the US.

I learned that medical science in 1956 dubbed alcoholism as a disease (not moral failure), and we were trending more and more towards treatment. People like Sen. Harold Hughes and Dick Van Dyke has revealed their alcoholism, etc.

But next came the War on Drug under Nixon and then Reagan. Gone was any talk of Disease, Rehabilitaion or treatment.

Now 60 years after 1956 many of us have rediscovered the idea of treatment, not incarceration. It is non-partisan, and many religious faiths also now follow that path.

There was a prominent NYC physician, Dr. Silkworth, that you may have heard about.  He began to develop the idea that alcoholism had a pathological, disease-like basis, back in the 1930s.

[Charlespg]

Saw part of a 2012 film last night, called "The Anonymous People" which documented the history of substance addiction in the US.

I learned that medical science in 1956 dubbed alcoholism as a disease (not moral failure), and we were trending more and more towards treatment. People like Sen. Harold Hughes and Dick Van Dyke has revealed their alcoholism, etc.

But next came the War on Drug under Nixon and then Reagan. Gone was any talk of Disease, Rehabilitaion or treatment.

Now 60 years after 1956 many of us have rediscovered the idea of treatment, not incarceration. It is non-partisan, and many religious faiths also now follow that path.

Look the report by the Cato institute about drug war outrages

Two of the worst I remember

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berwyn_Heights,_Maryland_mayor%27s_residence_drug_raid

and that baby in Georgia

 http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/headlines/2014/05/baby-in-coma-after-police-grenade-dropped-in-crib-during-drug-raid

Either way Their  would be a dead sheriff and some dead cops if that were my family

I'm surprised that  the victims of this crap haven't retaliated  or people  aren't in outright rebellion

Its why I stopped supporting the drug war because the government agenda is NOT public safety its a excuse 

[Fishrrman]

I kinda think the Red Chinese had the right approach about dealing with the drug peddlers and users after they took over...

[EC]

It's a good idea.

Hell of a sight cheaper than dealing with the disease aftermath of sharing needles and cooking up in dirty conditions, for those of you who live for dollars and cents.

As far as the addicts go, well, one of the huge motivators to get clean, according to people I go to meeting with, is shame. Unfortunately, it's also one of the biggest causes of falling off the wagon again, too.

I have no idea if GETTING addicted to something is caused by a disease, a wiring defect in the brain, faulty biochemistry, or what. I do know that BEING AN ADDICT is a disease. One you got for life.

[17 Oaks]

I kinda think the Red Chinese had the right approach about dealing with the drug peddlers and users after they took over...

LOL, yea their zero tolerance policy was brutal