Good afternoon and welcome to the New York City Hybrid Hair and on the Committee on Mental Health on Substance Use.

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Chair, we are ready to begin.

Good afternoon.

I'm Councilmember Tiffany Kavan, Chair of the New York City's Council's Committee on Mental Health and Substance Use.

Thank you all for joining us at this oversight hearing on syringe litter management and related support services.

We will also be hearing three pieces of legislation.

Intro 67, sponsored by Councilmember David Carr, establishing a public outreach and education campaign regarding the availability and use of fentanyl test strips.

Rezo 262, sponsored by Councilmember Linda Lee, calling on the New York State, calling on New York State to mandate basic training in addiction treatment as a requirement for medical schools that receive state funding.

And Reso 263, also sponsored by Councilmember Lee, calling on the federal government to mandate basic training and addiction treatment as a requirement for medical schools that receive federal funding.

We have been joined by Council members Felder, Aldaball, Hankerson, Wilson, Lee, and Carr.

Now, there are very real public health concerns from discarded syringes that should be recognized, especially in a place as dense as New York City.

The risk that they pose shouldn't be minimized.

Parents shouldn't have to sweep a playground before their kids can play.

Workers shouldn't fear a needle stick on the job.

In 2024 alone, outreach teams picked up nearly 200,000 syringes up off of our streets.

But today's hearing is about much more than litter.

It's about the story that is told behind each syringe and discarded needle and the very real humans behind them.

Because behind every syringe use is a person.

It's

someone's child, parent, or neighbor.

And often someone whose substance use disorder began with a prescription with trauma, with pain that our systems left untreated.

And too often we met them with handcuffs instead of help.

Arrests, evictions, lost jobs, lost children, weeks long waits for treatment, and so much shame that people hide.

Nearly half of all deaths among homeless New Yorkers in the most recent reporting year were caused by drugs or alcohol.

And that's not a personal failing, it is a policy failure.

And that failure does not fall on everyone equally.

We've made some real progress.

Overdose deaths fell from 2023 to 2024, but still six New Yorkers die every single day.

Black and Latino New Yorkers die of overdose at twice the rate of white New Yorkers.

Black New Yorkers have the highest overdose death rate of any group in our city, and the highest rates are among black New Yorkers in their late 50s and early 60s, which is quite frankly a group that's too often left out of how we talk about this crisis.

Men die at roughly three times the rate of women.

The Bronx has the highest overdose death rate of any borough, and Hunts Point, Mott Haven, Highbridge, Morrisania, and Crotana Tremont have among the highest rates in the city.

In 2023, the rate in Hunts Point Mott Haven was more than triple the citywide average.

And these aren't accidents of geography.

They're the result of decades of disinvestment, over policing, and structural racism in the very neighborhoods where the crisis is now the worst.

The

community syringe redemption program was built to meet both of those realities.

It's created by local law through this council and launched in 2025.

It trains participants to safely collect used syringes and return them to mobile vans in eight high-need neighborhoods for 20 cents a syringe up to $10 a day.

More than two million syringes have now been safely collected and disposed of.

Just as important, the program brings people into contact with care.

Every participant is trained not only in safe syringe handling, but in how to respond to an overdose and administer naloxone so that the people who are out on our streets every day are equipped to save a life.

Because participants come back to the vans week after week.

The program builds something our system too often lacks: a regular, trusted, low barrier point of contact with people who may never walk into a clinic.

And

so at each visit, staff can connect people to nearby syringe service programs, which offer naloxone, HIV and hepatitis C testing, drug testing,

uh

drug checking, counseling, and pathways to treatment and other health and social services.

For someone who has been failed by every system that they have touched, a relationship that starts with $10 and a conversation, can be the first door back to care.

Clean streets and saved lives are not competing goals.

A city that is serious about public health has to be serious about public space and serious about the people that we have failed.

I

want to thank the administration for being here, as well as the committee staff and my staff who that helped prepare for this hearing.

And I look forward to today's testimony.

And actually, with that, I'm going to turn it over to Councilmember Carr, who has a statement.

Thank