Officials from the New York City Health Department announced a three percent decrease in overdose deaths from 2017 to 2018. But of the 1,444 overdose deaths citywide, the Bronx saw an increase with 391 in 2018, an eight percent increase, designating it as the only borough with more than 300 overdose deaths in 2018, continuing the unbreakable trend of opioid-related fatalities.

In the written announcement, Dr. Oxiris Barbot, commissioner of the Health Department, said, “The decrease in drug overdose deaths is promising, but far too many New Yorkers are still dying.”

The news came three weeks after state senators held a public hearing at St. Barnabas Hospital on Aug. 8, featuring a variety of experts tackling the responsive rate of opioid overdoses and reduce the rate of addiction to drugs.

Sen. Gustavo Rivera is one of the co-chairs of the task force.  “It’s not just a problem in Staten Island. It’s not just a problem in the Bronx. It’s a problem everywhere,” Rivera, who chairs the Senate Health Committee, said in his opening remarks.

Rivera represents the 33rd Senate District, covering Fordham, an area that consistently ranks among the top neighborhoods for fentanyl use. The district also covers Kingsbridge Heights, home to a known drug use spot referred to as “The Tunnel,” a gloomy underpass that leads to the Kingsbridge Road subway station on the B/D line. Directly across the entrance, used hypodermic needles can be spotted along the pathway, cordoned off by construction barricades. Several homeless men and women were found sleeping on makeshift beds, with garbage strewn about.

In 2017, the Bronx overtook Staten Island with the highest rate of overdose deaths in New York City.  The latest published figures show that four of the six neighborhoods with the highest rates of overdose deaths are in the Crotona and Mott Haven sections of the Bronx.

In response to the alarming number of overdose deaths in the borough, Mayor Bill de Blasio pledged $8 million last November for drug treatment programs in the Bronx. The funds are part of the Bronx Action Plan, which creates teams of first responders that include a social worker and peer advocate to accompany the emergency medical technicians.

Additionally, $1 million is designated for more naloxone kits, support groups, and ad campaigns warning residents about the dangers of fentanyl, the drug commonly mixed with heroin to pack an even greater and potentially lethal high.

Joining Rivera as co-chairs during the day-long hearing were senators Pete Harckman representing parts of Dutchess, Putnam, and Westchester counties, and David Carlucci representing most of Rockland County and parts of Westchester County.

The panel also included five other senators—John Liu, Patrick Gallivan, George Amedore, Jr., Diane Savino, and Shelley Mayer.

“The goal is to produce a report … which is comprehensive, and which will very likely produce a policy agenda for next year,” said Rivera.

Among those invited to appear before the panel was Debbian Fletcher-Blake, a family nurse practitioner and CEO of VIP Community Services.  Founded in 1974 as the Vocational Instruction Program, the organization uses an integrative approach to treating addiction by including services such as education, job training, and life skills in addition to specific rehabilitation treatments.

Fletcher-Blake sees a complex regulatory system as an obstacle to offering addicts a more permanent solution.  Some doctors may see addicts for a physical ailment but cannot implement addiction treatment on the same day.

“For example, Medicaid laws prevent same day billing for patients that seek physical health treatments and behavioral health care,” Fletcher-Blake said.  “Requiring patients to come back another day leads to missed opportunities.”

Savino represents parts of Staten Island that have been ravaged by the opioid crisis.  She said that the epidemic has to be seen in a different light and that no family is immune from the addiction crises.

Thirty years ago, Savino started as a case worker during the height of the crack epidemic.

“We’ve come a long way in our understanding since then.  Addiction is a disease, not a character defect,” Savino said.

A better understanding of addiction is also promoted by Fletcher-Blake.  She sees a lack of compassion towards patients as creating unnecessary hardships.  “We ask people whose brain chemistries are twisted to sit with us to develop treatment goals that we use to determine success or failure,” Fletcher-Blake said.

On the law enforcement front, Bronx District Attorney Darcel Clark joined the rest of her counterparts across the city in urging state lawmakers to take action against the unregulated distribution of all fentanyl analogs. In a joint statement released on Aug. 26, the DAs pointed to the “dangerously potent synthetic opioid fentanyl and its variants, known as fentanyl analogs, [as] largely responsible for the spike in drug-related deaths in recent years.  In New York City in 2018, fentanyl analogs were involved in 60 percent of all overdose deaths.”

The DAs hope to increase law enforcement tools such as search warrants, wiretaps and arrests in their effort to remove fentanyl analogs from the streets. “By improving our ability to link overdoses and deaths to fentanyl analogs in autopsies and drug evidence, we can better protect the public and focus strategies on saving lives in our communities,” the DAs said in the statement.

During the task force hearing, senators also pointed to a lack of action from Washington as a contributing factor to the overdose epidemic.

“We do not have faith in the federal government,” Carlucci said referring to the lack of funds and services needed by the state to effectively combat the opioid abuse epidemic.

Not all of the suggestions, however, revolved around governmental and medical interventions.

Carlucci described the community residents as valuable assets in the fight against addiction and overdoses.  “We have to get more regular people involved,” Carlucci said.

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Welcome to the Norwood News, a bi-weekly community newspaper that primarily serves the northwest Bronx communities of Norwood, Bedford Park, Fordham and University Heights. Through our Breaking Bronx blog, we focus on news and information for those neighborhoods, but aim to cover as much Bronx-related news as possible. Founded in 1988 by Mosholu Preservation Corporation, a not-for-profit affiliate of Montefiore Medical Center, the Norwood News began as a monthly and grew to a bi-weekly in 1994. In September 2003 the paper expanded to cover University Heights and now covers all the neighborhoods of Community District 7. The Norwood News exists to foster communication among citizens and organizations and to be a tool for neighborhood development efforts. The Norwood News runs the Bronx Youth Journalism Heard, a journalism training program for Bronx high school students. As you navigate this website, please let us know if you discover any glitches or if you have any suggestions. We’d love to hear from you. You can send e-mails to norwoodnews@norwoodnews.org or call us anytime (718) 324-4998.