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When Schenectady Police announced five fatal suspected drug overdoses in a period of three days late last month, I was in Seattle, one of the most progressive cities in the country.
Seattle has been hit particularly hard by the epidemic of drug overdoses. The Seattle Times reported that King County, in which Seattle sits, is set to surpass its record fentanyl death toll with four months still remaining in the year. As of the start of this month, King County has already seen 704 overdose deaths related to fentanyl in 2023, compared with 712 for all of 2022, which was itself a record-breaking death toll.
My friends, family members and former colleagues in Seattle all seem to agree that downtown is nearing a state of emergency as a result of rampant drug use and corresponding tent cities. My brother-in-law, who works in tourism and who commutes daily to the city’s midtown convention center, described Midwestern visitors with fanny packs and clean white sneakers stepping out of nice hotels only to pass numerous people using drugs during a short two-block stroll to the city’s iconic Pike Place Market.
My friends and family members are reasonable and sympathetic. But they worry the city’s overly permissive policies toward drug use are attracting people with addiction to the city. And they question openly if the city’s quest for compassion has gone too far.
A Sunday Seattle Times editorial published during my visit lambasted the Seattle City Council for failing to pass a measure to adopt a reasonable state law making drug use and possession a misdemeanor, with jail as a possible last resort.
The editorial noted that large, neighboring communities had embraced the common-sense state law allowing police to make arrests for drug use after first prioritizing treatment, while Seattle’s leaders failed to make up their minds.
Similarly, Portland – Seattle’s fellow progressive Northwest cousin – has seen overly permissive policies that have enabled drug use. A recent New York Times article headlined “Scenes from a City that Only Hands Out Tickets for Using Fentanyl” included perspective from a coffee and wine bar operator lamenting that she has to sidestep needles and human feces on her way to work, as well as from a person living with addiction describing Portland as a “homeless drug addict’s slice of paradise.”
Laura Combs, executive director of the New Choices Recovery Center in Schenectady, pointed me to the article about Portland, which the addiction treatment and support organization has printed at its primary offices on State Street.
Combs said she was struck by the conundrum of the Portland bar manager.
“She had these feelings of like, I’m pissed. I’m sick of seeing this,” Combs said. “But on the other hand of being like, Oh, my God, it’s horrible what people are going through and living with, and we wish we could do something different.”
The situation in the Pacific Northwest felt suddenly very close to home following this summer’s spate of fatal overdoses in Schenectady. The deaths announced Aug. 22 followed eight suspected fatal overdoses during the first eight days of July.
Add to these overdose deaths the hundreds of asylum seekers, including more than 230 in Rotterdam, who have found themselves in the Capital Region, and you have two of the nation’s most perplexing issues playing out locally.
As with the rising overdoses in the Pacific Northwest, the arrival of migrants to New York state is at least in part a result of policies that may simply be too welcoming. The influx of asylum seekers upstate is a spillover from the flood of more than 110,000 asylum seekers coming to New York City, which is an attractive destination with a policy that guarantees everyone the right to shelter, despite the city’s housing supply being stretched to capacity. The promise for shelter is pretty hollow if scores of people are forced to sleep on the sidewalks outside hotels.
This past week, New York City Mayor Eric Adams, who has called for the city to suspend its longstanding right-to-shelter order, declared that the migrant issue will “destroy New York City.”
All of this put together helped make it apparent to me that the time for overly permissive policies has passed. While decriminalizing drug use and promising people a safe place to spend the night undoubtedly have moral high ground, it’s time we recognize the very real impact such policies are having on city streets.
At the same time, as our local communities grapple with how to respond to such complex and consequential concerns, we should be careful not to overreact. We can’t overcorrect for faraway laws and risk swinging the pendulum toward brutality, inhospitality and senility. We must maintain level heads.
“There are no easy answers,” Combs, the executive director of New Choices, told me. “We have supportive housing programs, too. But if you have somebody who’s actively using, and they’re in really, really bad shape, and they’re destroying an apartment, we can’t just be like, ‘OK, well, housing first, we want you to stay here. Landlords aren’t going to put up with that. Also, you don’t want people dying in their apartments. So what’s the balance?”
Fortunately, there is reason to believe that our communities are striking the right balance.
On the migrant issue, we’ve seen local volunteers step in to provide supplies and support to those housed in hotels, even as the company contracted by New York City to take care of the migrants has largely bungled its efforts, with the New York City comptroller this week announcing his office was declining to approve DocGo’s $432 million contract. We’ve also encouragingly seen the Mohonasen Central School District welcome dozens of the asylum seekers as new students.
From the side of looking out for residents, we’ve seen a bipartisan, reasonable state law proposal that would prevent upstate municipalities from being blindsided by the sudden arrival of asylum seekers in the future.
In response to overdoses, Schenectady County, in particular, has an encouraging approach. Earlier this year, the county launched an outreach “Hub,” which is a police- and county office-led initiative that promotes a collaborative response to drug use and homelessness involving law enforcement, support providers and other behavioral health professionals.
The partners involved in the Hub employ a harm-reduction model with those struggling with homelessness, mental health and addiction. The goal is to help make incremental steps in their recovery rather than emphasizing abstinence — often an unrealistic expectation.
This is a very grounded approach. And it’s one we need to maintain, especially as overdose deaths inevitably continue to spike. It’s important to recognize that fatal overdoses are likely to increase in large part because synthetic opioids such as fentanyl are dangerously potent and addictive.
“The whole drug supply has changed very dramatically in a short period of time,” Combs said.
The accessibility of fentanyl has contributed greatly to the spike in overdoses, putting even further strain on organizations like New Choices, which are already stretched thin. Combs said New Choices probably needs to increase its staff of 60 counselors by about a third as it helps to meet the demands of helping roughly 750 people.
The New Choices staff includes Haleigh Snare, an overdose prevention coordinator, whose job includes knocking on doors following reported overdoses and also working with the Hub team to canvas Schenectady’s streets, offering help to people living with addiction. Sometimes she simply hands someone a bottle of water, other times she connects people with New Choices’ resources. When overdose deaths, like those that have hit the neighborhoods of Central State Street and Hamilton Hill, are announced, they aren’t anonymous to Snare. They’re personal.
“It’s deeply upsetting every time that happens,” Snare said.
Her goal as a harm reductionist is to “meet people where they are at but not leave them there.”
That’s the reality-focused strategy we need to maintain. No, we don’t want to coddle addiction with far-too-lenient responses. But we also can’t lock our doors and blindly hope that drug use — or asylum seekers, for that matter — will simply disappear. We need to embrace policies that welcome people into our communities.
In both cases, work should be an important priority. Gov. Kathy Hochul has appropriately called on the federal government to fast-track work authorizations for asylum seekers. Frustratingly, the Biden administration has been reluctant to sign on.
In regard to addiction, a coalition of leaders, experts and advocates is focused on establishing a Recovery Ready Workplace initiative in New York state. This would essentially create incentives and support to employers that hire or retain workers who are in recovery from addiction to drugs or alcohol. The model places addiction out in the open in the workplace and encourages people to enter recovery rather than the current drug free workplace program that silences workers who are struggling with addiction for fear of being fired or stigmatized by bosses and colleagues.
A U.S. Department of Labor report shows that people who are in recovery from substance use disorder average nearly 10% fewer days of unscheduled leave per year than all workers and have a turnover rate that is 12% lower than the overall average.
Not only would adding workers increase the state’s taxbase, but employment can provide stability to people who need exactly that.
Finally, if we’re truly serious about a grounded approach, we must listen to people who spend time on the ground. That includes people who are addicted or who live on the street.
Randy Marshall, now a peer advocate at New Choices in his mid-40s, has dealt with addiction and homelessness. He said he began using drugs in his mid-20s, first taking ecstasy at night clubs and eventually turning to opioids.
For Marshall, a strong law enforcement response actually served as a meaningful deterrence.
“I’ve been incarcerated a bit, and I think that some of that consequence has had to play a part in me wanting to get better,” he told me.
When he was in the back of the police car after being arrested for selling cocaine, he remembers feeling relief.
“Literally I remember thinking, thank God it’s over,” Marshall said.
Of course, it wasn’t.
Because being arrested as a result of drug use was only part of his path toward recovery.
Four years ago, after multiple stints in jail, Marshall was back to using any drug he could find. Like the vast majority of people who are living with addiction, Marshall didn’t want to use, but he felt trapped by his disease. He felt hopeless.
“It was kind of self-fulfilling, you know. It was kind of like, I have no hope of being different,” he told me.
The day we met, the thick-chested Marshall wore a red and white T-Shirt with the words “Stay Suave” written in the style of the Coca-Cola logo. A matching Yankee hat sat atop his head, and his full beard was partly brown, partly gray, as if wisdom was still continuing to take root.
When Marshall was using, he hadn’t yet found the benefit of peer support, behavioral health clinicians and other resources offered by outlets like New Choices. He’d been arrested multiple times, which instilled in him the desire to change but didn’t arm him with the tools he needed.
Then one day, he said, he was pushing a grocery cart containing his 1-year-old son in his car seat.
“And I looked down at my arms, and they were all scarred and mangled, and I just had a moment,” Marshall said. “It gave me motivation. I’ve gotta do something.”
Three days later, he entered residential treatment at New Choices, which now employs him to share his personal experience when helping others living with active addiction.
What Marshall found that day pushing the grocery cart was the inspiration to embrace a different approach.
Columnist Andrew Waite can be reached at [email protected] and at 518-417-9338.
Categories: Andrew Waite, Email Newsletter, News, Opinion, Rotterdam, Schenectady, Schenectady County
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Waite, you are coming around just like I did, you realize that liberal progressive policies do more harm than good welcome to the Republican party.