An Overdose Prevention Center (photo: @nycHealthy)

In December, New York City became the first municipality in the country to establish Overdose Prevention Centers to allow people with substance use disorders to safely use drugs under medical supervision while receiving services such as medical care, mental health treatment, and more. After years of consideration and discussions with other levels of government, the de Blasio administration gave a longtime nonprofit service-provider the go-ahead to offer safe injection sites.

Within the first three months, the two sites in East Harlem and Washington

Fighting addiction and overdose in NYC (photo: Edwin J. Torres/Mayoral Photo Office)

In recent weeks, news broke that according to provisional figures from the National Center for Health Statistics, more than 100,000 Americans died of overdoses within a 12-month period ending in April 2021. For the first time in history, overdose deaths in the United States have exceeded 100,000 in a year, a value greater than the toll

The Mayor at an overdose prevention event (photo: Ed Reed/Mayor's Office)

I know what it’s like to be on the front lines of an infectious disease. I launched my career in harm reduction in the 1980s, at the height of the HIV epidemic. Just like with HIV, the fallout from COVID-19 is not limited to the lives we’ve lost to the infection itself—there are ripple effects that will be felt long after our city fully re-opens.

This time, it’s the twin tragedy of the

Naloxone training to reverse overdoses (photo: Edwin J. Torres/Mayoral Photo Office)

With the pandemic blowing a hole in the economy and leading to a drastic drop in state tax revenue, budget officials have for months been withholding payments for state contracts to manage cash flows. Among the victims of that fiscal approach are substance use treatment providers who are being forced to cut already-limited services and consider staff layoffs and furloughs, which they say will likely lead to a sharp increase in overdoses and new disease outbreaks around the