- The opioid crisis in Staten Island,
it’s just getting out of control.
It’s spiralling down.
Every seven hours there is a person
in New York City that dies from an overdose.
-If you get a bag of fentanyl
and you sniff a bag of fentanyl,
you’re gonna die. You’re gonna die.
And it’s a risk, it’s a risk
I take every day. So…
Go to the train station. If you look at, like,
the crevasses of the train station,
you find empty bags, used needles, all kinds of sh*t.
I was born in Staten Island, on the South Shore.
If I was going out and getting something,
alright, and I got fentanyl, I could die.
Yeah, that’s like, that’s really scary.
Especially, since it’s not some thing I’m looking to get.
You know what I mean?
Got a pusher here, a pusher there, a cap…
multiple caps in the dirt.
And that’s everywhere on Staten Island. Everywhere.
When people use drugs they’re failing.
And a lot of these people don’t have nobody to talk to, 25 00:01:37,297 --> 00:00:00,000 don’t have nobody to help them.
-To be an addict is probably one of the hardest things
I have ever experienced in my entire life.
I didn’t even know it until it was too late,
where I was taking a substance
in order to feel normal every morning.
I work for Community Health Action.
We have a mobile unit here.
Do you remember your last HIV test? 34 00:02:00,754 --> 00:00:00,000 You said it was over a year ago?
-Over a year ago. I’ve always been very careful… 36 00:02:04,291 --> 00:00:00,000 I don’t share needles, or you know...
-We do syringe exchange on the bus.
We do HIV testing.
We kind of are the middlemen in that process
of the addiction-to-recovery step.
Fentanyl is definitely a huge problem.
It is overdosing people quicker and is much deadlier.
Fentanyl’s present in everything nowadays.
There’s multiple people who are just overdosing
from cocaine and weed, 46 00:02:32,386 --> 00:00:00,000 who don’t normally take opiates.
-All I hear is horror stories.
“Oh, my cousin Joey died, and you know,
the bags were mixed with fentanyl. 50 00:02:42,562 --> 00:00:00,000 You know, he didn’t know. Now he’s dead.”
-Fentanyl’s cheaper than heroin.
It’s a better high. It’s got 53 00:02:50,470 --> 00:00:00,000 shorter legs, but it’s a better high.
-It’s a cheap way for the dealers to make money.
It’s a dirty game. They’re putting it in,
they don’t care if they’re killing people. 57 00:02:58,779 --> 00:00:00,000 They really don’t.
-What happens in an overdose is, we have,
we all have opioid receptors in our brains.
Those are our pain receptors.
When too many of those receptors...
Narcan, what it is,
it’s an opioid overdose reversal medication.
It’s the one thing that we actually have
when it comes to battling back
against these overdoses that are happening.
That middle button’s gonna be the one
that releases the medication.
Now when you press that you’ll feel a spring or a pop,
you’ll know it’s being released and once it is…
-It’s serious. Fentanyl kills people.
It’s the bottom line. 73 00:03:31,545 --> 00:03:31,144 In the last two years, I know,
probably like 10 to 15 people
that have overdosed and died. In the last two years.
There’s a stigma to this whole addiction thing.
And, you know, everybody wants to just push away,
just push everybody away.
You know, that’s not always the answer, you know?
Sometimes you gotta open your arms,
bring these people in, see what they need,
see what help they need. 83 00:03:54,534 --> 00:00:00,000 They’re obviously addicted to drugs for some other reason.
-Addiction gets you judgment,
any other disease will get you sympathy.
I see these people struggling and I’ve been there.
And you want to do everything you can to help them...
but to stop people from using,
we would love to say that that’s our initiative,
but I mean, realistically,
it’s to save those who are dying.