Prosecutor: Injection sites less than ‘safe’

The city’s top drug prosecutor ripped City Hall’s plan to open safe injection sites in a letter she sent to state health officials this month, calling it a threat to public safety.

Special Narcotics Prosecutor Bridget Brennan’s letter comes as the city officials await state Health Commissioner Howard Zucker’s decision about their proposal.

“This is a . . . one-dimensional strategy that undermines clear, direct prevention messages and education programs that emphasize the real dangers of narcotic drug use,” Brennan wrote. “The push for [injection sites] overemphasizes harm reduction at the expense of public safety.”

City health officials proposed the needle exchange in May after the city clocked its second straight year of more than 1,400 overdose deaths, preliminary figures show. Last year's tally nearly doubled the 800 overdose deaths reported in 2014.

Authorities say that opioids accounted for 80 percent of the deaths — with a particularly deadly synthetic concoction, fentanyl, accounting for half of all fatalities.

“We cannot connect New Yorkers to treatment if they are dead,” said City Hall spokeswoman Olivia Lapeyrolerie. “The city is seeking the necessary approvals to launch a one-year pilot pro- gram and will aggressively enforce any quality-of-life issues around these facilities.”

Zucker said in Brooklyn earlier this week he was still considering the city’s proposal, which has run into stiff opposition from neighborhoods and law enforcement.

In the blistering, three-page letter, Brennan offered a litany of complaints about the Health Department’s plan to allow injection sites at four needle exchanges in the city, arguing:

The sites would encourage drug dealing and negatively impact neighborhoods.

The sites would suggest “that black market drugs can be consumed safely.”

The Big Apple is so large and unique that other major cities with injection sites can’t accurately preview potential difficulties here.

She also dismissed a decade’s worth of studies showing that safe injection sites work.

“Long-established [safe injection sites],” she wrote, “do not correlate to lowered overall overdose death rates and do not have an impressive track record of linking clients to rehabilitative treatment.”

Reports from health officials in New York and Philadelphia — which is also combatting a devastating opioid crisis — and academic studies of sites in major Canadian cities found the sites help prevent fatal overdoses and HIV and increase enrollment in detox services.

This is a . . . one-dimensional strategy [that comes] at the expense of public safety. — Special Narcotics Prosecutor Bridget Brennan