New York City's new street vending machines for drug addicts got a firm thumbs-down from former NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton, who derided the effort as a misguided move that supports addiction.
In an interview Sunday with radio host John Catsimatidis, Bratton lamented that "the world has turned upside down."
"Instead of trying to get people away from drugs, we have policies now where we have vending machines to encourage them to stay on drugs," Bratton said. "We're going to make it safer for you to use drugs so you can spend the rest of your life not trying to get off drugs but to stay on drugs.'"
The vending machines, announced in early June, offers paraphernalia to smoke drugs, strips to test if drugs contain potentially deadly fentanyl, and Narcan to revive users if they overdose. The first machine was placed in Brooklyn.
"What happens when you stay on drugs? You want the next high. …You graduate from marijuana … to heroin. … That's the problem with addiction," Bratton said. "There's never enough drugs. There's never enough high. That's effectively what we as a government are starting to support.
"City after city. State after state: this idea that we will sustain your drug habit rather than try to get you off your drug habit."
New York City Health Commissioner Ashwin Vasan has defended the vending machines as helpful.
"Every three hours, we're losing a New Yorker [to drugs]. And it looks like 2022 is on track to be our highest year ever in overdoses,'' Vasan has said, the New York Post reported. "We have a rising tide of fentanyl, and now we have other substances entering our drug supply, which is really putting us behind the eight ball."
Bratton also railed at legal marijuana stores in Manhattan.
"I was just in Italy for two weeks on vacation … I did not smell marijuana for two weeks … Boom! As soon as you get back to [New York], it hits you in the face," Bratton said.
"They have created a climate where anything goes," Bratton said of state officials.
"Kids now 12, 13, 14, 15 can get ahold of [marijuana]. It's so readily available," he said. "If we're selling it illegally in 1,200 shops around the city, do you think they care who's coming in to buy it?
"They're not checking for IDs. It's a cash business. The city has totally lost control over it. The state has lost control over it.
"This was a system created by political leadership. Our systems have been stretched to the breaking point [and] in some instances have broken. And the only way we can fix them effectively is through political leadership."
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