Syringe vending machines
NYC vs. ‘white privilege’
City health officials plan to install 10 vending machines across the Big Apple that will dispense clean needles and overdose-reversing naloxone to drug users — an initiative they say will help tear down barriers created by “white privilege.”
The Dec. 8 request for proposals was issued by the nonprofit Fund for Public Health in New York on behalf of the city Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, which wants to launch a pilot program for the machines.
“Public health vending machines (PHVM) are an emerging strategy to support low-barrier access to naloxone, sterile syringes, and other harm reduction and wellness supplies,” reads the request for proposals for the plan, which would cost taxpayers $730,000.
The request also outlined its “racial equity” agenda:
“The . . . DOHMH is committed to improving health outcomes for all New Yorkers by explicitly advancing racial equity and social justice. Racial equity does not mean simply treating everyone equally, but rather, allocating resources and services in such a way that explicitly addresses barriers imposed by structural racism (i.e. policies and institutional practices that perpetuate racial inequity) and White privilege.”
Not everyone was buying the city’s rationale on the machines.
“I’d be for these vending machines if they promise to put them in Central Park, Fifth Avenue and Park Avenue — right where the wealthiest people stay,” said Hawk Newsome, the incendiary leader of Black Lives Matter in New York City. “Why should our children have to walk past people who are congregating around these machines and nowhere else.”
‘Priority neighborhoods’
The RFP lists several “priority neighborhoods” to be considered for vending-machine locations, including Union Square in Manhattan and Brooklyn’s East New York.
David Carr, a newly elected city councilman from Staten Island who represents one of the proposed priority nabes, called the idea “the height of absurdity.”
“We should be finding ways to take these people and put them into a rehabilitation program so they can overcome their addiction and we can try and save their lives,” said Carr. “This will lead to increasing crime in these areas and people will be found on the street having OD’d. It’s going to be a terrible thing for the neighborhoods they’re in.”
Steven Hill, a Greenwich Village activist who has been confronting the drug crisis in Washington Square Park, said, “Uncool. Very uncool. The city is enabling addicts at this point. It’s not helping them address and end their addiction.”