New York City runs ad campaign 'empowering' heroin users

A campaign by the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene is encouraging addicts not to be "ashamed," rather "be empowered" that they are "using safely." The ads are showing up on subways all over town.

The ad, which was spotted on a New York City subway reads, "Don’t be ashamed you are using, be empowered that you are using safely." The campaign appears to be designed to encourage the prevention of overdoses by giving tips on how to safely use illegal and dangerous narcotics.

The ad then gives tips to prevent an overdose beginning with the first tip, which is to "avoid using alone and take turns," thereby encouraging addicts to shoot up together.

Secondly, the ad suggested to "Start with a small dose and go slowly."

Third, the ad recommended having "Naloxone on hand." Naloxone can counteract an overdose but is not always effective and often times the user is too deep in the throws of an overdose to administer properly, if at all. If the drug is effective, users should then seek medical care. However, many do not and frequently die later.

The ad also recommends that users avoid mixing drugs and test their drugs using fentanyl strips. According to the Wall Street Journal, "Drug overdose deaths reached a record high in 2021, with more than 100,000 people lost to the continuing epidemic, fueled by the potent synthetic opioid fentanyl. The drug, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, can be up to 50 times more potent than heroin and 100 times that of morphine. Illicit forms of fentanyl are mainly manufactured by drug cartels in Mexico and spreading in the U.S."

The ad is geared towards what progressives call "Harm Reduction," which attempts to normalize drug use and is extremely ineffective.

Proponents argue that supervised heroin injections sites, also known as "safe injections sites" and needle exchanges reduce overdoses, reduce the spread of disease and leads to addicts seeking treatment.

However, according to recent studies and data, these sites do the exact opposite. A bombshell study by the Alberta government was released in 2020 on the province's Safe Consumption Sites (SCS), their term for heroin injection sites, debunked the long adhered to talking points of SCS supporters.

Last December, former New York City Democrat Mayor Bill de Blasio and the New York City DOH ignored federal law and announced the opening of the first legalized heroin injection sites in the US.

The sites called Overdose Prevention Centers (OPC) are located in Harlem and Washington Heights. There was tremendous pushback to the proposed locations. According to residents there was also little to no community outreach or public comment.

According to WCBS, Syderia Asberry-Chresfield who has lived in Harlem for over 30 years, is considering leaving for good, due to the rampant drug use in the area. "We have 22 schools within a two-block radius of these methadone clinics. This is normalizing behavior for our children. There’s nothing normal about this."

Ironically, as a US Senator, President Joe Biden was one of the authors of the federal statute, but in recent years has claimed the law's sentencing disparities between crack and powder cocaine caused racial injustice. This followed revelations regarding his son Hunter Biden's very public drug use.

Democrats want these ineffective and dangerous programs opened across the US, and are attempting to decriminalize drug use nationwide, as was done in states like Oregon with disastrous results. Washington state now appears determined to follow Oregon's lead.

Many cities have essentially decriminalized drug use, because progressive city and district attorneys refuse to prosecute drug crimes.

The White House has embraced "harm reduction" and has spent the last few months denying that the Biden administration has been giving out federal grants to fund the distribution of crack pipes and other drug paraphernalia since the allocations were made public in February.

Most recently, former White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki falsely claimed that "No federal funding has gone to it," during a briefing last month, despite the Washington Free Beacon revealing the inclusion of these items in kits obtained by the outlet.