A BIG FUNDING BOOST FOR ADDICTION SERVICES OFFERS HOPE IN NEW YORK
Faced with a surging addiction and overdose epidemic across New York State, Governor Kathy Hochul has taken a bold policy step and pledged an unprecedented $402 million for drug addiction services in 2022—a 56 percent increase over the previous budget. Once approved by the state legislature as part of her $216.3 billion budget package, the money will go toward expanding badly needed prevention, treatment, and recovery programs, including long-term residential services. This increase in funding will also allow treatment providers that were forced to curtail services during the pandemic to expand programs longer term, as a portion of the money will be guaranteed over the next few years, and funds from opioid litigation settlements will extend for more than a decade.
The additional resources will come from the influx of both settlement payments and revenue from a state opioid excise tax implemented in July 2019, as well as federal largesse in the form of block grants and pandemic-related relief and recovery dollars. The governor, who succeeded Andrew Cuomo last year, described her first budget as a “once-in-a-generation opportunity” to spur the state’s recovery. That also holds true for the public heath crises of addiction and overdose, as drug-related fatalities in the state were up 30 percent last year—including one every four hours in New York City, among the record 100,000 deaths nationwide in the 12-month period ending in April.
Now it’s up to legislators in Albany to approve the budget and work out the details of how those funds—which represent the largest increase in addiction spending since the late 1960s—will be allocated. Under the governor’s proposal, healthcare workers will get well-deserved bonuses and salary increases, while an estimated $113 million of the total will flow directly to municipalities charged with then directing the funds to different providers. These should focus on not only residential programs but also those for adolescents and young people, and services in communities of color that have seen recent spikes in overdoses. However, in order for the funding earmarked for such harm-reduction programs as supervised injection sites—the first of which opened last year in New York City—to be most effective, there will need to be a provision that those facilities serve as a bridge to treatment.
Overall, New York’s budget is a big win for both those struggling with substance abuse and the healthcare professionals who care for them. It could serve as a model for other states to replicate with their own anticipated cash windfalls. As the latest phase of the COVID-19 pandemic is hopefully easing, this is the moment to fully confront the nation’s addiction crisis, which has been neglected for far too long.