EP 2: Addiction
Useful Links
OnPoint NYC and Drug Policy Alliance were our guests for this episode. Here is a report from the NYC Health Department on overdose deaths in 2023.
Here are some studies indicating the efficacy of Overdose Prevention Centers from Cato Institute, the National Institute of Health, and in JAMA, and you can find more research at OPC info. You can read DPA’s fact sheet on Overdose Prevention Centers here.
Here is some further reading on punishment and substance use:
In Neuropsychopharmacology: Addiction should be treated, not penalized
From Prison Policy Initiative: Addicted to punishment: Jails and prisons punish drug use far more than they treat it
From Pew: More Imprisonment Does Not Reduce State Drug Problems
From the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime: From coercion to cohesion: Treating drug dependence through health care, not punishment
Transcript:
Kathleen P (Host): This is the Problem with Punishment Podcast. Spoiler alert, the problem with punishment is it doesn't work. But the bigger problem is that we turn to punishment in every aspect of our lives, from our families to our neighborhoods, our boroughs, our city. We keep expecting punishment to make things better, when for the most part, it makes whatever problem we're addressing worse. Every time punishment fails, it hurts. Some people have taken the pain of that failure and turned it into purpose. I'm your host, Kathleen Pequeño, and I'll be talking with a range of New Yorkers who have experienced firsthand the failure of punishment and who found or created something better to do instead. From gun violence to child abuse to drug addiction, New York can lead the way in actually solving some of our most pressing problems. But first, we have to talk about the problem with punishment.
Welcome to this episode of The Problem with Punishment. This is the problem with punishing addiction. That sound you hear a crowd of people talking in a room. Can you tell where in New York we are? A museum, a restaurant, a train station? The point of this podcast is to take you places where New Yorkers are doing things. Things that work better than punishment. Places where people are tackling problems. And for this episode, we're starting out in Harlem.
Now, for generations, Harlem has been the birthplace of American culture shifts. And in the first season of the podcast, we've had a few trips to Harlem. For this episode, we went to one of the iconic streets in Harlem. Then we went around the corner to a more industrial street, and that's where we got to visit the wonderful folks at OnPoint, NYC.
When I walked up to the door of the Harlem site, it seemed like any other 100-year-old building you might encounter in the island of Manhattan. Now there's the ones with the giant rooms, you know, like from the Gilded Age, with their high vaulted ceilings. But this is more like the type of building that was built for poor people during the Gilded Age. These 5- or 6-story buildings that are just crammed on top of each other. I got buzzed in the lobby, and like a lot of these older buildings, it's really narrow. And there's someone with a hand truck trying to squeeze to get by. Then I went all the way in, and the interior space is transformed. It's modern, bright. It's full of people. The staff took me from floor to floor so I could see the community space they were building out. The sound you just heard was from the drop-in center, where on a busy morning, dozens of people might be getting breakfast.
Every floor had something else going on. Mostly it's very noisy and active, except for the acupuncture space, that was quiet and calm. There was a small, quiet room off of the space where you could learn about the history of community-based drug interventions. You could also learn more about how controlling drug addiction has been turned into a weapon against communities in Harlem for decades, which is part of the point of what they're trying to do at OnPoint--really break up that cycle. The OnPoint center also has what's called an overdose prevention center. It's also modern. It kind of looks like the part of the medical office you need to go to when you have to get your blood drawn. There's cubbies, which provide some privacy, but people can see what's going on and painted on one of the walls in the Overdose Prevention Center, in foot-high, tall letters, it says "this site saves lives." That's not an exaggeration. This room is there to prevent overdoses. And it's next to a health clinic. I had a few minutes with the person who runs the clinic, Susan. I asked her to explain to me in the most direct terms what they are doing there.
Susan S: We provide health care services to people who use drugs, but we're doing a lot more than that. We're providing a safe space for people to come in, to not be judged for their drug use, and to be able to provide them opportunities to engage with healthcare and advocate for themselves.
Kathleen P (Host): It was a day that there seemed to be a lot going on, so we arranged for another time to talk, where also I could talk to several people at once, and you, the listener, would be able to hear people better. So with that, let me switch to Sam Rivera, who is the director of OnPoint, NYC. And in these conversations with people, I often ask them, first off, how has it been going to use punishment to solve the problem that you're working on?
Sam R: Punishing people for using drugs. First of all, it hasn't worked. It puts you yet in another system that is full of punishment. Right. People forget that prison was created for people to go in and do well, to get better. And what we have now, for many years now, is people going into prison to be punished again. And so you're going from one punishment to another. And a simple belief that people enter prison and do well, or people enter prison and leave prison after that punishment, and suddenly are going to decide to stop using.
Kathleen P (Host): I was fascinated that Sam invoked the Quaker origins of the penitentiary system. That's a topic for a different episode. But he's been in this arena for decades, dealing with the effects of addiction, the effects of the criminal legal system. We were also joined on this call by Jason Beltri, who runs their community initiatives.
Jason B: People don't understand addiction. They think that we can police the issue away or send people to treatment, and that they're going to be magically better.
Kathleen P (Host): Jason's absolutely right. People don't understand addiction. I don't understand addiction. I mean, I do, because like most people, there are substances that I can understand I'm addicted to. They're just mostly unregulated. And I have loved ones who've struggled with their use of alcohol and drugs. Their use of alcohol and drugs has upended their lives. It's upended my life. It's upended other people's lives. It's hurt people. Yeah, it's very confusing. Families in this situation are desperate for solutions. And sometimes that solution takes the form of prison or jail. It's the closest thing you get to a break. But Jason talked about that.
Jason B: You can't go to jail and then come back into the same environment, or you can't go to treatment and come back into the same environment and expect different behavior. A plan has to be developed, identified, and executed. The needs need to be addressed, the housing insecurity, the food insecurity.
Kathleen P (Host): It can be hard to get excited about meeting people's needs, like Jason describes, when they're causing chaos in your life and hurting people. But it comes back to being realistic. And for another dose of realism, I'm going to turn to Denise Barkley, who is one of the navigators at one point, New York City. So she's working with people who use drugs every day. And she's not a starry-eyed dreamer. She's just a great combo of practical and caring.
Denise B: I feel like if you punish people who are using, they will hide. They'll hide their usage. They'll hide any needs that they may have, which can be dangerous. It could be very dangerous. That's how people end up overdosing and things like that. So I think the worst thing could be hiding.
Jason B: Besides the danger of hiding, it creates a culture of concealment, of consequences and fear. So, you know, people are hiding if they're discovered to be using drugs, you know, they lose their housing, they lose their benefits. Providers won't meet with them. And so it forces people to conceal that. And then, as an outcome, it creates more danger and a higher risk of overdose. Historically, it's like a police issue instead of a medical issue. So part of the work that we're doing here is also trying to change how people are looking at addiction and treat it as an illness, as opposed to a law enforcement issue.
Kathleen P (Host): I'm going to pause for a second, listening to the OnPoint folks and talk about how I got introduced to them. It was through Toni Smith, the New York state director at the Drug Policy Alliance. The Drug Policy Alliance is a national organization that's been around for many years. And I'm going to be honest, I have not always agreed with them and how they talk about drug policy. I think sometimes they've been kind of cavalier, but I think that's less true now than it's ever been. And I've really come to appreciate the approach that Toni takes. We've had some great conversations about the problems of addiction, which is why I knew she would be a great resource for the podcast. Punishments are a policy. It's our main drug policy. So the question is, how is it working to address the harms in our lives caused by addiction? And right out of the gate, Toni kind of blew my mind with a simple thing she said to help me think about it differently.
Toni S: A lot of the ways we think about the harms of substance use are actually a consequence of the harms of drug prohibition. And so when we think about people's use leading to a lack of housing, lack of employment, lack of access to healthcare, other kinds of care. Like think about all of the ways that people who use drugs are often excluded from parts of society, and access to things that are really necessary for healthy, sustainable lives. All of those are impacts of drug prohibition that are often associated or often blamed as causes of the use itself, where it's not. So many of these compounding experiences have created instability where we want people to be more stable. A lack of housing and food, and having to focus every day on how am I going to survive today, makes it really hard to be stable when you are in survival mode.
Kathleen P (Host): This is where I think, in the frustration of our daily lives, frustration with how addictions to drugs and alcohol can really mess up multiple people's lives, that we get frustrated with people who are stuck on the sinister merry-go-round that Toni articulates. The punishment creates the problems. Then we associate those problems with addictions, and somewhere in the back of our minds, it comes back to the idea that it's people's bad choices. We keep blaming people for their addictions and for the negative things that happen. And the OnPoint folks see this. They see the effects of this on the daily.
Sam R: All of our people have been to detox and treatment numerous times. So then the system blames them. Right. So if we say they've all been to detox and treatment and they're still using drugs, then they are the issue, when the reality is more than 85% of the people who go to detox and treatment use drugs again.
Jason B: Addiction is like, you know, battling that or navigating that. It's not linear. So all of our people have been into treatment, and then they get released back into the same circumstances that trigger their use and things like that. So I think that that's one of the biggest pieces, like people don't understand that you can go to detox several times, but also with the capitalistic nature of our society, where everything's tied to money, where your health insurance is tied to your employment, and if you're struggling with addiction, then you can't maintain a job and things like that.
Kathleen P (Host): So, for anyone who has a loved one who's struggled with addiction, you have probably also experienced seeing them try different forms of rehab or detox and then just winding up back in the same boat with use. And so part of our frustration and why we turn to punishment is we're like, well, detox and treatment don't work because, you know, as they mentioned, for so many people, it takes multiple attempts to do it for it to work. It's not an individual failure that people try detox or treatment, and they're not successful. If it were an individual failure, it wouldn't be most people failing. But let's come back to just this kind of this baseline thing that when treatment doesn't work, we say, well, we need something stronger, we need punishment. But when punishment doesn't work, we just say, well, I guess that just means we need more. Let me turn back here for a second to Toni from Drug Policy Alliance.
Toni S: It's such a big question why it is so difficult to stop trying to punish our way out of the war on drugs when we know that it does not work. We are well over 50 years into the contemporary iteration of the war on Drugs, and a huge part of it is that the drug policies are still very deeply intertwined with people's feelings about drug use. While we have seen a shift in public sentiment around wanting to be kinder and gentler in how we respond to issues related to drug use, people still are very uncomfortable with the idea of drug use. The idea of certain kinds of drug use in certain spaces.
Kathleen P (Host): So part of how it's become so easy to have public sentiment manipulated to favor punishment when it comes to drug addiction, is this very toxic mix of personal experience for many of us over a long period of time, of dealing with loved ones, with addiction and the frustration of our strong feelings about that, and then also our strong feelings about strangers and their drug use and seeing maybe the effects of their drug use. And that toxic mix means that we're just not able to pause and really consider what's going to work when it comes to taming addiction. For this, I want to turn for a second to Pia Marcus, who runs Overdose Prevention at OnPoint.
Pia M: We look at and think about substance use in very different ways, if it's in a private setting versus a public setting. People are using every strata of class, race, etc. is using substances. And when somebody has challenges with substances, families sometimes deal with that, sometimes they don't. But the folks who are on the street, who are left to use and live and struggle in public, are often the most shamed and isolated and scapegoated. And that's a tiny percentage of the number of people who are using substances in our society.
Kathleen P (Host): And once you found some people to scapegoat for a problem, it becomes easy to then suggest the harshest and most inhumane treatment of people and sell people on the idea that it's going to fix that problem.
Toni S: We are seeing a move away from mass criminalization. At the same time, we are seeing large public support for forced or coercive treatment, and so we're still seeing a large desire by elected officials, the general public, to dictate what people who use drugs should be doing, the decisions they should be making, what kind of treatment they should be getting. And ultimately, what it means is that people who use drugs should not be visible, should not have the autonomy to think about their health and wellness, and make decisions on their own timeline. And so we're still very much in a realm where policies are being decided based on what people think and feel about drugs, and how that then kind of creates mandates on people who use drugs that are not actually conducive to what people need.
Kathleen P (Host): At OnPoint, New York City and the drop-in centers, and just throughout my conversations with them, there's just such a focus on choice and respect. And I kind of contrast that with the times when I'm kind of face-to-face with my loved ones. Once addictions, how hard it is to be patient, how hard it is to have the compassion that I'm sure they deserve. But it's hard to muster up. And I found myself curious about that in the conversations I had with them. And I think what they bring to it is a really fair and realistic perspective on why people are using drugs, and how common it is for people to use drugs or substances. And let's go back to Pia for to talk more about this.
Pia M: I think we also lose sight of why people use drugs. We just punish without asking or understanding. And a big piece of work that we do is helping people get insight into why they're using, and also recognizing that there are a lot of structural reasons why people use poverty, trauma, all sorts of things that are placed as somebody's fault when it's actually not in their control. And the harm is not actually the drug use. The harm is oppression and racism
Pia M: If we start from the root of substance use as pain and treating pain, whether it's physical or emotional, or even spiritual, it makes sense to treat that pain with a substance that is a logical decision. That's a decision that everybody makes.
Sam R: If you go into your cabinet and you open a cabinet because your back hurts, right? You're addressing pain. And it's all of those that entire spectrum Pia just laid out there. People use drugs primarily to self-medicate mental health conditions and other traumatic experiences they've had. So, constantly putting people through the system of punishment isn't the right way, which is why at OnPoint, we love on people, and it's a very different approach to healing. People who use drugs have been put in a bucket for many years, as bad people as black sheep. All of these titles, they give people who use drugs in a way that then perpetuates that theory. Right. Well, even if it's someone you love. If they start using drugs, they now belong to a different group. They almost leave your family because you, because the family themselves sort of disowned them.
Toni S: One thing that is important to remember is that many people use drugs. That includes alcohol, right? Like in our culture, substances are consumed for many reasons, for pain relief, to cope with pain that isn't physical, but maybe mental. Emotional recreationally for enjoyment is also a reason why people consume drugs and for other reasons. And most of us, all of us, know people or our people who are on that spectrum.
Kathleen P (Host): Most people use some substance or another for recreation or for self-medication. As folks have indicated, we all live somewhere on the spectrum, but that doesn't stop us from kind of turning our heads from left to right to judge folks and say that when they step out of bounds. It's different.
Denise B: It also stems from people's experiences, especially personal ones with family members or friends who do use substances. It's not so. They may just group everyone all together, and if they've had items stolen or some sort of altercations or things like that, it's kind of hard for certain people to let that go and say, oh, it's because of their on X, Y, and Z, and it's an illness. So they see that or have gone through that and then see someone else on a substance and be like, oh, nah, ‘they're just like my uncle’ or ‘just like my mom’ and group everyone into that category.
Kathleen P (Host): So we've got this mix of frustration with people we might know personally and our own personal direct experience. And then back to the idea of scapegoating and the ways in which this frustration we have with this real-world issue turns into a call for punishment.
Sam R: Specific drugs are allowed to come into specific neighborhoods. Those people use and sell those drugs and then are punished for doing so. So it's this modern-day slavery system of continuing this process, right? And so and we're talking about Black, Brown, and poor whites as well. So there’s class within it. And it's not the same for everyone.
Kathleen P (Host): There's also a piece of this that thousands and thousands of New Yorkers have lost loved ones to overdoses. The last year that there's a complete data set available for was 2023. And in 2023, about 3,000 people in New York City died of overdoses that year. That's as if every three hours, someone was dying in the city of an overdose. In this podcast, when we talk about the futility of punishment, the harm of punishment, I always wanted to add in. And we have in every episode what works better. And for this, I'm going to turn to a phrase that has can be kind of jargony, but I think it's a phrase worth learning, worth understanding, and worth supporting. And it's what's at the center of OnPoint NYC's approach, which is harm reduction. I'm going to let a couple of folks define Harm Reduction for us, starting with Toni from Drug Policy Alliance.
Toni S: Harm reduction means responding to behavior, you know, is going to happen in a way that can minimize the harms related to that behavior. So, harm reduction can be, you're a parent and your child is at a party and you don't want them to drive home drunk. And you say, ‘if you need a ride, call me. I would rather you call me and tell me you're doing something that I don't want you to be doing than you not to tell me and end up injured.’
Kathleen P (Host): I think harm reduction sometimes sounds like it makes sense. It's just practical. And sometimes it sounds like, oh my gosh, are you enabling? And for this, I want to go back to when I was in OnPoint at the health center within the drop in center, talking to one of the staff there and asking, Susan, what do you tell people when they ask you what you do?
Susan S: I would say that when I'm talking to people, even in my own personal life, about what we're doing here, one of the arguments that often comes up is, ‘you're making it easier for somebody to do something that's really, really dangerous.’ Well, we, of course, don't see it that way. What we're doing is giving people a safe space to use so that they don't die.
Kathleen P (Host): And again, the deaths they're preventing are not theoretical. In 2023, every three hours. We have to come up with things that work better than just telling people not to use or ordering them not to use, locking them up when they fail at something that most people fail at. Let me go back to Sam.
Sam R: We're a harm reduction organization. So the biggest misconception is that we're enabling people to use drugs, which is sad for people to think that what we know as harm reduction. It's every individual's journey and how they want that journey to be. What we do–and I never say what we're trying to do, I say what we're doing–And what we do is create an opportunity for people who use drugs to see themselves. To participate in what most people think is an everyday life. Right? An everyday occurrence. So, a simple thing like having an opportunity to take a shower every day. Having an opportunity to have clean clothes. Have an opportunity to have a healthy meal. That might be the very thing that gets someone when they're ready to either reduce their drug use or stop using drugs.
Toni S: Even with all the punishment, more people's loved ones are dying, and the punishment of another person doesn't often help us heal and feel whole again. And so it is often people who are closest to the impact of this issue, who come to see the issue differently and become really strong proponents of harm reduction.
Kathleen P (Host): There are lots of routes to becoming a supporter of harm reduction. You could become one by listening to a podcast about it, or you could go that much more painful and expensive route of personal loss. But then, what are you actually supporting when you say support harm reduction? If we look at OnPoint NYC and what they offer through the drop-in centers–some people go there and they can see a doctor, they can get a meal, they can see an acupuncturist find a quiet place to be by themselves. They also can go into a room and use drugs that they have brought. The center does not supply drugs. Apparently this is a common myth. They can come and be in an environment where they are less isolated, where people are available. If it turns into a medical emergency–they apparently can spot and prevent a medical emergency–this is always the best way to go. They can get test strips and learn how to test their drugs for fentanyl. There's all sorts of things that are part of meeting people where they're at. Let me have Sam describe the philosophy that is underneath it all.
Sam R: What we do at Harm Reduction is to remain as fluid as possible. Let's see what this person needs versus that person. Even within our work, we never think of providing the same service to every person. We have so many different services so that people can choose when they're ready to participate in one. And sometimes, you know, something you never expect will be the one thing that touched that person individually. That, for them, it triggered. I'm ready to make a change in this way or that way. The other piece is we're never telling people to stop using drugs. We're supporting people in wanting to be as healthy as they can be, whatever that means. We're living in that truth and providing services from that space, and making sure and doing everything possible to prevent our people from being punished yet again, for doing something to help themselves manage their life on a daily basis.
Susan S: I don't think that if you've endured years of trauma, or if you have been using drugs for many years, that you have this pull to use something that's going to make you not feel so sick that you're going to die. That's one piece that people really don't understand is really how bad it is. If you don't have this thing that you've been using for a long time. I don't think the threat of prison or punishment is going to prevent people from using drugs.
Denise B: I think a lot of folks think that our folks don't belong to anybody, or no one cares about them, or they don't have family. And the ones that don't belong to us. What they do get, I feel like, especially in case management, like they get care that they otherwise don't get any place else. They get a person or people to listen to them. So I can be walking from the site to the bus, and before I make it to my bus stop, I'm stopping and talking to some of our folks. People, you know may stop and stare at me like, why are you talking to them? I could be on a train and see a participant and have a conversation like I would a normal person. People tend to forget that these are people. They don't know their circumstances of why they are. And I think we said this earlier, the reason they do use a substance. At the end of the day, they are people. They are people. We laugh and joke. We dance. We sing like they're people. So I think some people tend to forget that.
Sam R: I would say how many people we have in our organization, how many people I've met throughout this country and beyond who were those very people that others are judging today? Right. My brother just celebrated 30 years sobriety. And, you know, that's for his story and his journey. But there was a time where the family wanted nothing to do with him. Now it's literally the complete opposite. He's the most trusted, the most.
You know, I mean, it's knowing someone in that very different way, you know, just like people raise their hand to share their cancer survivors. Can you imagine many more, many more people talking about their history and drug use and where they are when people allow them to be who they are and treated them as human and what happened?
Jason B: We spend a lot of time rehumanizing the experience on a general scale, like when we're talking to people who are not or groups who are not harm reductionist. We like we're at a community board meetings and things like that, and people are voicing their concerns and things like that and like the way they speak about our folks, it's like, you know. I love to use those opportunities to sort of like recenter and remind people that these are people's sons and daughters, people's parents and siblings and things like that. So it always hits home.
Kathleen P (Host): It comes back to that. Harm reduction is more about prevention. By definition. Punishment has to happen after something bad has happened.
Toni S: We invest very little in services and programs that actually prevent people from becoming unwell. Education. School-based health centers that are sufficiently staffed, and after-school programs, and early childhood intervention and support for families to keep families together and housed and fed, like all of that is prevention. And so once you have people who have endured a lifetime of being denied what human beings need to be healthy and thrive, then yes, it is more costly and it is longer term and requires more intensive investments in order for people to be well.
Overdose prevention centers do work, and we can talk about what they work to do. We are a big fan of keeping people alive. They absolutely work to keep people alive, and they work to invite people into care. In the United States. We have two of these centers, and we call them overdose prevention centers. These types of centers exist across the world. In other parts of the world. They are just part of the healthcare system. They are not called overdose prevention centers. They are called safe consumption sites or supervised consumption sites because they are not necessarily only existing in the face of a crisis. They are existing in recognition that people who use drugs deserve to be invited into care. The way the rest of us should be as well. And so in the United States, although we still are contending with a serious overdose crisis, overdose prevention centers are not only in response to a crisis, although that is critical. There are also a recognition that people who use drugs have been excluded from so many parts of society, which has made it really difficult for them to just kind of exist.
Kathleen P (Host): I have one piece of good news, which is that when I recorded this interview with Tony. There were only two overdose prevention centers in the United States, but since then, a third one has opened up. And I want to come back to when I asked Sam and the other folks at OnPoint NYC about what people really needed to know to understand how we were going to deal with problems of addiction, and it comes back to knowing and understanding better the people involved.
Sam R: What I wish people knew about our people is what's at the core of their drug use. You know, when I came back to the work, it was important for me and us to talk about, like when we talk about numbers, how many people you serve, how many we talk about numbers, and then we talk about who they are brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, lovers, you know, humanizing who they are. I think if people viewed them, you know, they're not drug users, they're people who use drugs. And the other thing is not to define anybody by the worst thing they've ever done. Right. But to look at them from this other place and from this loving place, and watch how different it will be. Can you imagine the sensitivity people would have if they looked at someone who uses drugs, the way they look at someone with a disability? I don't always want to make that comparison, right? It's not to compare, but it's this human part of the average person who can look at someone in a very different way. And one of the things we've done well, I would say we've done well as an organization, is presenting our people the way Denise described them, the way Jason and Pia described is presenting them as humans, not clients just, but people who are beautiful in so many ways.
Kathleen P (Host): Well, let's come back to the fact that no matter what you see on the news or what you read in the newspaper, you can't tell by just looking at someone whether or not they're struggling with addiction. And I just want you to hear from a round of folks from OnPoint New York City. They're talking to and interacting with hundreds of people a year, each who are struggling with addiction, and they are finding ways to learn from folks.
Denise B: Some of these people have graduated. They have degrees. You know, they're just like us at the end of the day. Don't get the appearance, get fooled by them. They may know more than you know. I wish someone would just take a minute and have a conversation with some of our folks. Like, I've learned stuff from people like, I just wish that can happen.
Pia M: Substance use is challenging. Why people use, it's challenging, and that makes it hard to have relationships that people feel good about. People need a lot of support and navigating relationships and navigating their use and its impact on other people, and that we don't do a good job as a society with that part.
Jason B: I wish people could see more what the impact is of treating people with some compassion and changing or choosing your language more carefully around people like destigmatizing the work. I think it really brings out the best in people when we rehumanize their experience and, you know, address people by their name and, and they're, they're surprised that we know their names and things like that. So I think it's a powerful tool to advance the movement forward.
Kathleen P (Host): I started out this episode with the noise and bustle of the clinic, before we switched to the more quiet conversation. I want to take us back to the last conversation I had before I left that day, when I was talking to Susan at the clinic, and when I asked her what was the most common kind of situation that she encountered in her years of working there with folks. I want you to hear how it went.
Susan S: People don't want to keep using drugs, but they don't know how to stop, and they need help. I hear that more often than, oh, now I can party. They are often just trying to prevent themselves from feeling really, really sick.
Kathleen P (Host): And they don't want to die from their addiction, presumably.
Susan S: I can't say that that's true for everybody.
Kathleen P (Host): Oh.
Susan S: Yeah. I mean, I think most people who come through our doors are here because, again, they need a lot of support.
Kathleen P (Host): And they can get it here without judgment.
Susan S: Exactly.
Kathleen P (Host): You know, it was this painful wake-up call that sometimes my loved ones who've been so frustrating, so hurtful because of their addictions, sometimes they might not know if they want to live or die. I know the judgment and the punishment seems like it's about to work–any minute now, the next time. Just a little harsher, just a little stronger. But these punishments are a bill of goods for individuals and families, and communities that are struggling with addiction. I encourage you to learn more about OnPoint New York City. Pay attention to what they have to say about harm reduction. Being with them really reminded me that there are good people creating unique situations, trying things we haven't tried before. Things that we don't invest enough in. As you learn more about OnPoint NYC, I hope you tell your City Council members. Tell your state legislators, tell your governor, it's time to actually support these new strategies on dealing with addiction before we lose thousands of more New Yorkers.
This podcast was produced in Brooklyn, New York. The unceded ancestral lands of the Lenape and Canarsie people. We thank all the ancestors for caring for this land over the generations, and we are committed to the work of creating a shared future that includes the native communities that are still here, and all the people who call this land home.
Thank you to the amazing people at OnPoint, NYC who took time to talk with me, including Denise, Jason, Pia, Reggie, Sam, and Susan. I know that I pulled you all away from doing other things. Although next time I hope to see the honeybees as well. Thank you to Toni Smith of Drug Policy Alliance for explaining harm reduction to me a few different ways. And for all you do to make policy work approachable and about human beings more than about rules. Patty Katz presente. I could feel your determined presence and all the love that you always brought to our conversations about addiction and harm reduction. Thanks to our podcast team, Doctor Candacé King, Reverend Doctor Sharon White-Harrigan, and Tess Weiner. Thank you to our production partner, JuleCave Studios, and our very creative creative partner, Julius Shepard-Morgan. I'm your host, Kathleen Pequeño. This podcast is a project of the Justice Beyond Punishment Collaborative at the Center for Justice at Columbia University, with support from Trinity Wall Street. You can learn more about the Collaborative and our other creative projects at https://BeyondPunishment.org.
For this episode, we visit the wondrous folks who run OnPoint NYC, an overdose prevention center. They base their work in the principles of harm reduction, which we explore in this episode. And we also talk to Toni Smith, the New York State Director at Drug Policy Alliance. Together they explain the futility and danger of trying to control addiction by punishing people for drug use.
