Overdose AR Turns One!!
Greetings all, On December 4 th 2017, the Overdose Avoidance and Recovery Initiative was established. The collaboration between the District Attorney’s Office, the court, Defense Bar and Bronx Community Solutions was born. OAR was created to address the rising fatal overdose crisis. If the Bronx was a state, we would have the 15 th highest rate of fatal overdoses in the nation. This epidemic has taken mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, wives, husbands, sons and daughters. The criminal justice system once sought to criminalize and stigmatize those with addictions. But this initiative was created to remove that stigma and offer help to those consumed by this fatal addiction. More than 1,370 New Yorkers died from overdoses in 2016 — twice the number of deaths from homicides and car wrecks combined. Roughly 80% of the overdoses involved opioids. Out of those, 90% were caused by Fentanyl, a powerful synthetic drug said to be 50 times more powerful than Heroin. Chemically produced F