Addressing the Opioid Epidemic in a Profit-Driven Healthcare System:
Finding Solutions, Then and Now

Tuesday, Feb. 19, 7:30 - 9:00 PM
NY State Nurses Association, 131 W. 33rd St. (bet. 6th & 7th Aves.), 2nd Floor, Manhattan

Free and open to the public / Wheelchair-accessible

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Featured Speakers:

Bruce G. Trigg, MD
Harm Reduction and Addiction Medicine Consultant

Ashley Lewis and Paul Frazel
Members of Students for a National Health Program – NYU
Co-coordinators of NYU student campaign against the Sackler family - owners of Purdue Pharma; affiliated with PAIN (Prescription Addiction Intervention Now)

Walter Bosque
Licensed Acupuncturist and co-founder of Lincoln Detox (1970-1978)

Film clip: “The People’s Detox” (trailer here)

Join PNHP - NY Metro for a wide-ranging discussion of this critical issue. Gothamist has reported that in 2017, “overdose rates among black New Yorkers surpassed rates among whites and Latinos for the first time in a decade, due in large part to growing fentanyl usage.” Nationwide, the epidemics of opioid-use disorder and overdose deaths have been growing among all communities and ethnicities. One cause of the crisis is iatrogenic (overprescribing), induced by pharmaceutical companies – such as Purdue Pharma, sellers of OxyContin. Other roots are the social, economic, and cultural “diseases of despair” created by late-stage capitalism. Effective and humane responses have always been hampered by the medical-industrial complex’s profit-seeking, along with bureaucratic inertia, racism, and cultural stigma. A single-payer system would eliminate major barriers to addressing this deadly epidemic.

Our panel will explore campaigns and models of treatment and care – currently and historically – that offer promising solutions. The major immediate needs, which will be discussed at this forum, are:

• Reducing prescription opioid painkiller abuse,
• Ensuring access to Medication-Assisted Treatment, and
• Expanding the use of Narcan/naloxone, an overdose-reversal drug.
• Implementing/expanding harm reduction programs: syringe exchange & safe injection facilities

Forty-plus years ago, a model community empowerment project was Lincoln Detox, a grassroots clinic run out of Lincoln Hospital in the South Bronx. This program sprang from a 1970 hospital occupation by Puerto Rican Young Lords, Black Panthers, and white radical health workers, addressing a grossly unmet need. Within two years, they discovered and received training in the power of acupuncture to help in the detox process – eventually becoming a world-renowned and widely-adopted model.