By Doug Wyllie
In early June, a series of more than 200 wildfires began to break out in the Canadian provinces of Ontario and Quebec. Ever since then, the air quality index (AQI) over a massive swath of the United States has been something akin to ancient Pompeii the day after Vesuvius popped.
In New York City—the unofficial epicenter of the mainstream media megalopolis—the dismal air quality was briefly the only thing people were thinking about, talking about, and writing about. Headlines in the Big Apple told tales of woe like the de facto closure of area airports and temporary postponement of Shakespeare in the Park and a Yankees vs. White Stockings baseball game.
The woe was, well, woeful.
The Folly of Verbal Deflection
While nobody in Gotham was particularly happy about the hazy air quality, one person was practically overjoyed to discuss in vivid detail the health risks posed by particulate matter in the polluted air.
His name is Doctor Ashwin Vasan.
You see, Dr. Vasan is a “primary care physician, epidemiologist, and public health expert with nearly 20 years of experience working to improve physical and mental health, social welfare and public policy for marginalized populations here in New York City.” It says so right there on a government website, where it is also made quite obviously clear that he now holds the esteemed role of Commissioner of the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene.
Dr. Vasan was so downright eager to talk about new public health “crisis” because it required no intellectual gymnastics or jujitsu—no tactical verbal deflection—when faced with reporters’ questions. The “news” that New Yorkers must “limit outdoor activity” or “wear a high-quality mask” outside in that smoke-soaked air had suddenly sucked all the air out of the news Dr. Vasan and his department had made just a week earlier.
That’s when his office had unveiled a new public health vending machine (PHVM) containing “free” supplies of “harm reduction and wellness” items including drug paraphernalia like crack pipes and opioid overdose-reversing kits.
You see, before the Big Apple got smoked, Dr. Vasan was smothered in questions about those vending machines, and drug addicts, and unintended consequences.
The Hazards of Harm Reduction
In a press release, the NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene said that the “public health vending machines are an innovative, low-barrier strategy to reduce stigma and reach New Yorkers who may not already be connected to harm reduction services.”
The media relations announcement said that the new machines will “stock a variety of health and wellness supplies, such as naloxone (Narcan), hygiene kits, and safer sex kits” but didn’t mention that they would also contain accoutrements such as pipes used for smoking crack and crystal meth and possibly even syringes for intravenous heroin injection.
Last time we looked, crack cocaine is still a Schedule I controlled substance (with no accepted medical use and/or a high potential for abuse), making it illegal to buy, sell, possess, and/or consume—even in the city that never sleeps. So is heroin.
So why on God’s green Earth is a government official (and his agency), with the apparent tacit (and probably explicit) approval of the elected leader who placed him in office, making it easier for people to access and abuse those substances? It’s totally contrary to the agency’s mission statement to “protect, improve and promote the health, productivity and wellbeing of all New Yorkers.”
Naturally, the advent of this new program has drawn considerable criticism from people who tend toward a mindset favoring law and order, public safety, and basic common sense.
City Councilwoman Joann Ariola (R-Queens) is among those in opposition, telling the New York Post that “anyone supporting these vending machines should be ashamed of themselves.”
Councilwoman Ariola said also that money the city is spending on these machines—which cost $11,000 each, even before even being stocked with the goodies left there for grabbing hands—”should be spent on rehabilitation and social services to actually help addicts rather than on items like these which only encourage their addiction.”
The Sound of Breaking Glass
It would be fascinating to be a “fly on the wall” of the meeting during which this idea got pitched and ultimately approved by the good Dr. Vasan. It’s a pretty good bet that nobody named Bill Bratton was in the room at the time.
You see, Bill Bratton was once the Police Commissioner for the City of New York, and he brought to that job a deep and meaningful understanding of the Broken Windows Theory of Policing. Bratton came to that office at a time when the city was besieged by crime, driven in large part by the crack cocaine epidemic.
Crack cocaine—at once highly addictive, relatively inexpensive, easily trafficked, and sometimes deadly—nearly ruined New York City in the 1980s and early 1990s. Consequently, Bratton directed officers of the NYPD to retain a high level of focus on addressing robbery, rape, manslaughter, and murder while simultaneously cracking down—no pun intended—on so-called quality-of-life crimes like panhandling, prostitution, and public intoxication. Importantly, topmost among those “minor” offenses pursued by NYPD under Bratton’s tenure were misdemeanor narcotics matters associated with crack cocaine.
By the time Bratton had left his post as New York’s top cop, felonies there were down almost 40 percent in and the homicide rate had been cut in half. Importantly, the scourge of crack cocaine had been all but stopped. The sound of breaking glass had dissipated.
It’s undeniable that drug addicts do illegal things—in addition to doing drugs—including burglary, theft, robbery, assault, battery, and all other manner of mischief in order to pay for their habit.
It’s impossible to say it any more plainly than Larry Kudlow did when he eloquently wrote in the New York Sun, “There is no such thing as ‘safe’ drug abuse… Drugs kill. Drugs destroy lives. Drugs waste human potential. Drugs breed crime.”
The Need for Focused Attention
It’s undeniable that the plague of poisonings from the ingestion of illegal narcotics laced with fatal doses of Fentanyl—a deadly synthetic largely manufactured in China and trafficked over the US-Mexico border—must be addressed. According to Fox News, there were 2,668 drug overdose deaths in 2021 in New York City, compared with 2,103 in 2020—Fentanyl was involved in 80% of all overdose deaths.
So, it’s at least understandable to look for ways to make naloxone (Narcan) available to people addicted to opioids and at risk for overdose. Unfortunately, while this potentially life-saving product may reverse overdoses, many—if not most—of those same people will almost certainly then consume the drug all over again, possibly in greater volume and with greater frequency in a perpetual pursuit of the “high” it offers.
Meanwhile, putting crack pipes in vending machines is the epitome of stupidly focusing attention on the wrong thing. Putting crack pipes in vending machines as stupid as choosing to lock up the products people steal from pharmacies rather than locking up the people who steal products from pharmacies.
Dr. Ashwin Vasan apparently feels that ordinary law-abiding New Yorkers should summon a pharmacy clerk to unlock the toothpaste and deodorant they wish to purchase, but individuals addicted to illegal narcotics seeking supplies that further facilitate their self-destruction should have to do little more than press a few buttons on a “vending machine” on the street. He’s wrong. New Yorkers need focused attention on resolving the crime crisis caused by the copious consumption of illegal narcotics.
When the smoke eventually clears—as it always does—those questions about vending machines and drug addicts and unintended consequences will remain hanging in the air, awaiting focused attention.