


Holy moly! The Biden administration is talking law and order.
Well, maybe not the whole Biden administration — maybe just the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Damian Williams.
The prosecutor says two government-sanctioned hard-drug-addict shoot-up boutiques operating in New York City are illegal — and hints that he might just slap a padlock on them.
For sure, nobody’s talking up a resurrection of the Rockefeller drug laws. (More’s the pity.)
But it’s a baby-step — sort of like a drug dog in the White House if the Bidenistas suddenly got serious about cocaine.
It’s rare when someone of Williams’ standing suddenly notices that New York City is in open violation of federal, state and local drug laws.
Williams has cast a stink-eye on OnePoint NY, a not-for-profit (what else?) that operates what reportedly are the nation’s only two “supervised injection sites” — one in Harlem and one in Washington Heights.
Consider them bring-your-own-substance comfort stations for addicts worried about overdosing: Show up, shoot up and if it looks like things are going ‘round the bend there will be someone there to, er, intervene.
OnePoint says it has saved 1,000 lives (but without offering long-term survival stats, which would be helpful), and if that’s the case, fine.
Yet its mission statement is a little weird: “We seek to combat stigma and invite people who use drugs to participate meaningfully in society, instead of pushing them to the margin.”
Really, if more addicts fretted about stigma and societal participation — to say nothing of overdosing — there likely would be fewer addicts around to de-marginalize in the first place.
Ditto if more prosecutors paid attention to the open-air narcotics bazaars in public places all across the five boroughs. And not just the five boroughs.
Which is where Damian Williams comes in. He is, he tells the New York Times, a prosecutor; the sites are illegal and therefore legit targets for a crackdown.
And Williams is, of course, absolutely correct — even as his observation has given the creeping fantods to the usual suspects.
Including, for example state Sen. Gustavo Rivera of the Bronx and Assemblywoman Linda Rosenthal of Manhattan’s Upper West Side (where else?).
They note, correctly, that OD deaths are up — but add that “substance use disorder (ahem, drug addiction) is often criminalized and stigmatized instead of being treated as a public health emergency.”
But while public health is very much a priority — what is OnePoint, if not a health initiative? — “criminalization” has become yesterday’s news.
For example, The Post last year tracked 2021-22 drug enforcement numbers in New York City and found them to be down dramatically in the wake of “bail reform” — just as ODs rose sharply.
Coincidence? Correlation? Causation?
The illegal narcotics universe is murky — but you’d have to walk around the city blindfolded not to see that every illegal drug imaginable is available just about everywhere — yet there are no handcuffs in sight, anywhere.
Clearly, the Rivera-Rosenthal anti-enforcement trope is patronizing nonsense — as is OnePoint’s no-such-thing-as-a-bad-junkie approach to the illegal narcotics trade.
And make no mistake — a trade it is, sucking untold sums from demoralized and near-defeated city neighborhoods while leaving naked misery behind.
Now along comes Damian Williams to hint — however faintly — that maybe enough has been enough. And good for him.
It ain’t handcuffs, but it’s a start.
Email: bob@bobmcmanus.nyc