New york city state Sen. Pete Harckham, of the Hudson Valley, is chair of the Senate Committee on Alcohol Addiction and Drug Abuse Solutions and is taking a trip the state listening to numerous stakeholders talk about concerns surrounding substance abuse and dependency.
” This provides us, actually, an ear to the folks who are offering services on the ground so we understand what the spaces in the system are, and what the difficulties they deal with in handling New york city state are,” Harckham stated.
At the end of the listening tour, Harckham is intending to craft legislation to plug those spaces.
Twenty-three of Harckham’s expenses were passed throughout the last legal session, much of which were motivated by discussions with stakeholders quite like the ones he’s having this summer season.
Harckham informed Capital Tonight that these discussions are “actually enhancing the requirement” to combine the Workplace of Mental Health (OMH) and the Workplace of Alcohol Addiction and Drug Abuse Solutions (OASAS) since suppliers are discovering that handling 2 regulative systems is excessively troublesome.
” What we are doing to folks is we are controling them to death,” Harckham stated.
He likewise discussed the requirement for increased financing for real estate, transport, and damage decrease.
” We require to put more cash into damage decrease. Among the favorable indications, is individuals in the field are informing us that (damage decrease) is working. They are seeing outcomes. They simply require more cash to money the mobile outreach,” Harckham stated.
Damage decrease techniques consist of needle exchanges and safe injection websites.
Throughout this leg of the journey, Harckham went to Cortland, Ithaca, Syracuse, Rochester and Buffalo. Later on in the summer season, he will speak to suppliers and other stakeholders in the Adirondacks, the Hudson Valley, New York City City and Long Island.