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BROOKLYN WEEKLY, SEPTEMBER 8, 2019
OVERDOSE
Brooklyn District Attorney
Eric Gonzalez piloted his Brooklyn
Clear program — which offers
suspects cuffed on narcotics
possession charges the
chance to avoid prosecution if
they complete a drug counseling
program — in southern Brooklyn
neighborhoods in February
2018, before expanding it boroughwide
in September.
Since then, Gonzalez’s office
has accepted 410 participants,
of whom 380 completed the program,
according to spokesman
Oren Yaniv.
Gonzalez offers the program
to suspects arrested with
any narcotic substance, not
just opiates, according to Yaniv,
who noted their office recovered
crack cocaine in more
than half of cases, compared to
just 25 percent with opioids.
But advocates claim more
can be done to protect Brooklyn
drug users, saying Governor
Cuomo must authorize de Blasio’s
plan to open the nation’s
first supervised drug injection
facility in Boerum Hill if he
wants to see overdose numbers
continue to fall.
“There are some improvements
Overdose deaths decreased for the
fi rst time in eight years, according
to new fi gures released by the city’s
Health Department. File photo/AP
in numbers, but the state
is now a big barrier and Governor
Cuomo is now a big barrier
to saving more lives,” said
Reed Vreeland of the harm reduction
advocacy group Housing
Works.
Vreeland went on to compare
Brooklyn’s 273 deaths
to Portugal, a country with
twice the population of Kings
County, but which decriminalized
all drugs in 2001, and had
only 54 overdose deaths in 2015,
according to the Drug Policy
Alliance . “When we get policy
right, the outcomes follow,” he
said.
Brooklyn’s overdose deaths decreased by almost a quarter in 2018, down 82 deaths from the year before. Only Queens also
registered a decrease, while the other three boroughs had higher numbers than 2017. Department of Health
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