Former NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton defrauded town on Sunday for installing an street vending machine that caters to drug addicts with products akin to crack cocaine, lip balm and NARCAN.
“The world has turned the wrong way up,” Bratton he told WABC 770 AM “The Cats Roundtable” with host John Catsimatidis.
“As a substitute of attempting to get people off drugs, we now have policies where now we have vending machines to encourage them to remain on drugs. “We’ll make drug use safer for you so you’ll be able to spend the remainder of your life not attempting to get off drugs, but staying on them.”
Bratton was referring to a vending machine revealed by Adams administration health officials in Brownsville, Brooklyn earlier this month that provides free useful items for drug addicts, including drug smoking paraphernalia, strips to check whether drugs contain potentially deadly fentanyl and NARCAN, to attempt to revive people in the event that they overdose.
No less than three more such vending machines are to be placed in other drug-infested districts as well.
“What happens whenever you stay on drugs? You wish one other high. …You go from marijuana…to heroin. … That is an addiction problem,” Bratton raged. “There are never enough drugs. It’s never high enough. That is what we as a government are beginning to support.”
“City after city. State by state: this concept that we will keep your drug habit going as an alternative of attempting to kick you off.”
City Health Commissioner Ashwin Vasan defended the vending machines on the device’s recent unveiling in Brooklyn, saying they are going to help New Yorkers stay protected.
“We lose a New Yorker every three hours [to drugs]. And it looks like 2022 is on course to be our highest overdose yr ever,” Vasan said on the time.
“We have a rising tide of fentanyl, and now we have other substances being introduced into our drug inventory, which really puts us behind the eight.”
Specifically, he noted the growing presence of xylazine, a veterinary drug referred to as “Tranq” or “zombie drug”, which might put users into a catatonic state and conditions that eat their flesh.
But Bratton wasn’t buying it.
The previous top-ranking police officer – who previously served two terms as city police commissioner under mayors Rudy Giuliani and Bill de Blasio – added that the legalization of recreational marijuana use in New York City is one other mistake that has expanded the local illegal marijuana market and encourages youth to smoke illegally.
“I used to be just in Italy for 2 weeks on vacation… I have never smelled marijuana for 2 weeks… Boom! As soon as you come to [New York]it hits you in the face,” Bratton said.
He said New York officials have now allowed the illegal market to spiral uncontrolled.
“They created a climate where anything goes,” Bratton said.
“The one positive aspect of the red cloud we had last week is that we couldn’t smell the marijuana,” he said, referring to the smog attributable to forest fires in Canada.
“Kids aged 12, 13, 14, 15 can get into them [marijuana]. It is so accessible. If we’re selling it illegally in 1,200 stores across town, do you think that they care who buys it? They do not check ID. It’s a money business. Town has completely lost control of it. The state has lost control of it.”
Governor Kathy Hochul and the state legislature recently approved a bill to extend fines for illegal cannabis dealers and make it easier to shut them, but there are such a lot of shops now.
As in the past, Bratton blamed New York’s political leadership, especially left-leaning state legislators who passed pro-crime defendant laws akin to cashless bail reform, for the surge in crimes that make life difficult.
“It was a system created by political leaders,” Bratton said. “Our systems have been stretched to the limit [and] in some cases they broke. And the one way we will effectively fix them is thru political leadership.”