imagine for a moment that you’re caught
in the middle of a storm your home has
been destroyed and you’re with the
person you love the most maybe that’s a
child or a parent a sibling or your
spouse it’s dark and it’s cold and the
hurricane-force winds and the torrential
downpours threatened to pull you apart
as you cling together those rains and
winds accelerate your being slowly but
surely pulled apart you reach out for
each other time and time again your
hands touch only briefly your sobbing
uncontrollably and before long they’re
gone there are thousands of Long Island
there are 442 Long Islanders who lost
their lives in that storm in the last
year and we’re going to lose even more
in 2017
you see 442 Long Islanders and more than
52,000 other Americans last year lost
their lives to drug overdoses all of
those drug overdoses were directly
connected to prescription pills
painkillers like oxycontin and vicodin
and percocet and fentanyl and heroin or
some combination of those drugs but more
importantly all of those fatalities were
directly linked to a disease disease of
addiction a brain disease that’s
preventable that’s treatable and for
which death needn’t be the outcome yet
when we think about the number 442
that means that by this time tomorrow
morning some Long Island family probably
within a few miles of here
well began making funeral plans for a
loved one before breakfast addiction has
hit Long Island hard like any other
natural disaster it’s destroyed homes
it’s upended communities it’s claimed
lives Long Island wasn’t ready for this
you know we mourned when David laugher
burst into Haven drugs in Medford on
Father’s Day in 2011 and mowed down four
innocent people in his quest for
prescription drugs we cheered when we
saw a dozen doctors and healthcare
practitioners arrested locally for
running pill mills and writing fake
prescriptions then we bristled a little
bit when the Long Island Expressway
became known nationwide as the heroin
Highway but we failed to connect the
dots we failed to sustain our attention
we ignored the warning signs and the
dire forecasts about the storm we
ignored the dramatic increases in
drug-related arrests the treatment
admissions and the overdoses
you see heroin doesn’t happen here it
happens somewhere else
to someone else when we think about the
average heroin user it’s the chronically
homeless guy stumbling around the Lower
East Side with a needle in his arm it’s
not the perky cheerleader from Garden
City it’s not the honor student from
Smith town it’s not the scholar athlete
it happens somewhere else to someone
else and when it happened to our kids we
chalked that up is lousy choices or poor
parenting or lousy morals in doing so we
gave heroin a ten year running headstart
and now we’re trying to catch up you
know this isn’t the first natural
disaster that Long Island has faced in
2012 horrid Hurricane sandy swept in did
a lot of damage and claimed 13 Long
Island lives and in the week of that
storm we did a post-mortem and said what
went wrong how can we weren’t better
prepared probably individually we all
have a lot more flashlights and
batteries in our houses now collectively
here on Long Island we took steps to
secure our shorelines to amp up our
power grids to rebuild our
infrastructure and make it stronger to
make sure that we were better prepared
for the next hundred year storm you know
we need to do the same thing when it
comes to opioids and heroin and
addiction but here’s the thing unless we
take those steps it’s not going to stop
it’s not like a tropical storm that’ll
just eventually blow out to sea unless
we do something to stop it it will
worsen it will continue and here’s the
other thing there’s not just one big
thing that we can do there’s no silver
bullet that’ll make it all go away and
make it better there are however a bunch
of smaller things that we can do to
begin to turn the tide let’s talk about
a few we need to get serious about
prevention we need to get schools to
understand that hurting 500 kids into an
auditorium for 45 minutes once a year in
order to check a box isn’t good
prevention evidence-based
age-appropriate individualized sessions
that are integrated into 180 days of the
school year from the very first day of
kindergarten until the last day of 12th
grade will absolutely make a difference
we’ve learned now that the DARE program
didn’t work and scaring kids doesn’t
work the potential consequences
associated with drug and alcohol use are
serious enough we don’t need to
exaggerate them in order to get our kids
attention and when we do they tune us
out we’ve got to make sure that our
messages are relevant with some kids we
should be talking about how the use of
alcohol and marijuana can be a gateway
to other things but for kids who are
already experimenting in smoking pot
we’re not necessarily talking about
marijuana is a gateway drug we should be
talking about it as an exit drug and as
we give kids straight up information in
a way that’s honest and forthright let’s
also understand that we’ve got to help
them build some core competencies if we
can help kids learn good communication
skills good good decision-making skills
good refusal strategies those are
competencies that protect them from a
whole bunch of things including drugs
and alcohol but from a whole bunch of
things as well let’s help kids talk
about and manage the anxiety depression
and stress that comes along with
adolescence that comes along with
high-stakes testing that comes along
let’s give the same factual straight-up
information to their parents no
judgments
show them the science and the data and
then help them translate that
information to their kids in a way
that’s sustained it’s loving and it’s
designed to stick
let’s help those same parents come to
terms with their own substance use past
or present and let’s help them to
understand that the drugs of today and
the potential consequences associated
with their use are dramatically
different than they were perhaps thirty
years ago let’s make sure that all kids
and adults are screened for mental
health disorders and substance use
disorders as often as possible let’s
make sure that every healthcare
practitioner is talking to every patient
during every visit about their emotional
well-being about how much they’re
drinking about their use of tobacco
and about their use their non-medical
use of prescriptions for those that need
addiction treatment let’s make it
available on demand there shouldn’t be
waiting lists
I shouldn’t have to show up in an
emergency room at 4 a.m. to get first
online in order to get a treatment bed I
shouldn’t be sitting in my home
frantically dialing substandard
treatment facilities in Florida that
advertise on late-night TV addiction
treatment should be evidence-based it
should be culturally competent it should
be individualized to the person and
their needs and yeah again it ought to
be available on demand it shouldn’t be
difficult to find a treatment facility
that specializes in co-occurring
disorders we are a substance use problem
runs concurrent with a mental health
issue let’s make it easy let’s assume
that everyone has a co-occurring
disorder because they probably do let’s
prevent insurance companies from
requiring that folks fail first at
outpatient treatment before they’ll pay
for inpatient treatment when a line of
healthcare professionals are telling
that person you need to go inpatient
you’ve been using 15 bags of heroin a
day for two years you’re going to die if
you don’t go insurance companies
shouldn’t be allowed to say no and when
a healthcare professional recommends 30
days worth of treatment they shouldn’t
stop coverage on day 5 it shouldn’t be
so hard to find treatment for parenting
and pregnant moms it shouldn’t be so
hard to find treatment for young women
who are struggling with eating disorders
and addiction it shouldn’t be so hard to
find trauma-informed care because here’s
a newsflash trauma is now the rule
rather than the exception for a lot of
the bottom line here is until we make it
easier to get treatment than it is to
get heroin we’re not going to turn the
tide you know there are multiple paths
to recovery for some people it all
starts in a church basement for others
it starts in a wilderness program or a
traditional treatment center
some people use medication assisted
treatment there are multiple paths and
that’s a good thing all of them should
be laser focused on addressing the
biological the psychological and the
spiritual components of addiction but if
hard folks complain that some patients
are on methadone for twenty years so
what well the promise of a medication
free life is a gift it’s not reality for
everyone we don’t tell diabetics enough
with the insulin stop using it as a
crutch
I’ve heard people suggest to me that if
you use buprenorphine or suboxone to
curb the cravings associated with
addiction you’re simply trading one drug
for another but if we truly in our
hearts believe that addiction is a
biologically based phenomenon rather
than a failure of willpower then having
a pharmaceutical intervention in our
toolbox makes perfect sense here too
when doctors treat folks who are at
elevated risk for heart disease they
don’t tell them to suck it up and spend
more time on the treadmill they
prescribe statins they recommend a
healthy diet and they recommend a
moderate exercise plan they use every
tool available in that toolbox to get
that person well and to keep them safe
we ought to be doing the same here the
carnage on Long Island would be even
worse if it weren’t for a drug called
naloxone otherwise known as narcan
it’s an opioid reversal agent and police
officers and EMTs and even lay people
are using that drug to bring people back
from the brink of death but as we
resuscitate those folks we got to make
sure that we’re linking them up to
treatment we got to make sure that we’re
helping and guiding the families who are
affected by this and we’ve got to make
sure that giving somebody the ability to
breathe again it should be the least we
can do but it shouldn’t be the best we
could do you know creating a life is
different than saving a life and as we
help folks remove drugs and alcohol from
their daily routines we have to help
them add something back in we’ve got to
give them the skills and the knowledge
and the attitudes necessary to be
successful for the rest of their lives
treatment only lasts for a short
I’m Recovery’s a likely lifelong
proposition we’ve got to do more to
support people in recovery as well as
their families you know here on Long
Island we recently opened a Recovery
Center that’s great but we need 12 we’re
having some really good and serious
conversations about opening a recovery
school on Long Island but we need it
today I happen to believe that every
school ought to be safe sober and
conducive to a young person’s recovery
they’re not and there’s a growing group
of young people who could benefit from a
setting where your recovery comes first
social and emotional learning comes
second and academics comes third that’s
how we save a generation and while we’re
talking about saving generations one of
the greatest lessons we’ve learned out
of this modern-day crisis is it using a
criminal justice response to a public
health problem that’s driven by a
relentless brain disease is wasteful and
counterproductive our jails and prisons
are filled filled with folks who are
struggling with untreated substance use
disorders and mental health conditions
our facilities are full it was okay
apparently to lock up an entire
generation of young black men for drug
offenses but heroin 2.0 is white
that’s why we’re suddenly talking about
alternatives to incarceration and
expanding drug courts and street-level
diversion before people ever get into
the system that’s why we’re finally
talking about some progressive solutions
but let’s agree on this fairness
dictates that everyone benefit equally
from our newfound sanity you know when I
started here this morning I told you
about those 442 Long Islanders I wanted
to get your attention I hope I did I
didn’t tell you about the thousands of
Long Islanders who are recovering one
day at a time I didn’t tell you about
the lives reclaimed the families
reunited the momma got her son back this
I didn’t tell you those stories but
those stories are what create hope in
the midst of so much devastation those
stories are going to power us through
this crisis and those stories help to
eliminate the shame and stigma that not
only surrounds addiction but fuels the
disease it’s really easy to say that the
devastation we’re experiencing today is
unparalleled but that’s not true how
many American lives have been lost to
to the heroin crisis of the 1980s and
the result in hiv/aids epidemic
how many futures have been lost to crack
too many this is our chance to make
things right this is our chance to
become better prepared the next time
around is the best time now
no that was yesterday that was 10 years
ago
that was any time within the past
century when we could have come up with
a more creative comprehensive and
compassionate approach to addiction but
the second best time is right now it’s
we need to help families who have lost a
loved one rebuild their lives we need to
strengthen and fortify our schools and
our communities we need to shelter and
support those who are struggling and
most importantly we need to help those
who have found a new way of living bask
in the sunshine of their recovery thank
you very much [Applause]