Nassau County exec Bruce Blakeman unveils $15M plan to stop fentanyl crisis

A top Long Island leader on Monday called on President Biden to secure the southern border to prevent fentanyl from flowing into the US — as he unveiled a new, $15 million initiative aimed at saving lives.

As drug overdoses ravage his community, Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman announced the four-year plan to help treat and curb fentanyl-fueled addictions and deaths.

But he says the plan won’t be fully effective without also cracking down on the supplies of the potent opioid coming in from Mexico and overseas.

“Nassau police do an excellent job. Our cops are out there. They’re making arrests. They’re doing what they have to do,” Blakeman, a Republican, said at an emotional press conference attended by the mom of an OD victim, as well as Nassau Police Commissioner Patrick Ryder.

“But fentanyl is flooding our communities and it’s coming in through our borders, it’s coming from overseas. And I’m calling on President Biden …. to protect our borders. Protect it from all the fentanyl that’s coming in. We’ve got to get serious about stopping it.”

Fentanyl — an opioid 50 to 100 times stronger than morphine — was detected in 80% of drug overdose deaths in New York City in 2021 and was the most common substance involved in fatal ODs for the fifth year in a row. 

More than 2,800 New Yorkers died of a drug overdose in the city — the vast majority involving fentanyl — over a 12-month span ending in July 2022, according to the most recent data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

In Nassau County, the medical examiner’s office reported 270 OD deaths in 2021, 190 of which were from fentanyl.

Numbers for 2022 are not complete but the trend is about the same, Blakeman said.

At the Mineola press conference, Carole Trottere, a Long Island mom who lost her 30-year-old son Alex in 2018 to heroin-fentanyl poisoning, warned parents to get their heads out of the sand.

“I’m one of thousands of parents on Long Island. If you do the math, with the stats of how many people have died of fentanyl poisonings, just multiply that by how many parents and other loved ones and families are affected,” Trottere said.

“I’d like to plead to the parents out there and say you can’t be in denial about this crisis. I’m sure you have good kids and I can just imagine parents saying, ‘My kid’s a good kid, I don’t have to worry about them. My son’s head of the lacrosse team. My daughter’s headed to medical school next year.’”

She continued, “These counterfeit pills, they can kill you in one night. You could be at a party and someone says, ‘Here, try this pill,’ and you’re not going to wake up the next morning.

“So if I have to plead to parents — your kids are good kids, but don’t take a chance.”

The Long Island Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence also announced it is distributing 60 NARCAN kits across Nassau to stem overdoses.

Blakeman emphasized that he was not playing partisan politics by appealing to Biden.

“This is a group effort. This isn’t about Republics and Democrats, it’s not about the county executive, it’s not about the legislature. It’s about us all chipping in together because basically this kind of drug, it doesn’t discriminate based on race, based on ethnicity, based on what your religion is, based on what your socioeconomic status is. This is a drug that’s insidious and it’s in every neighborhood and every community and we’ve got to fight it,” he said.

He noted that more than 300 people die every day in the US from drug overdoses, mostly from fentanyl.

“If there was a plane crash every day, boy, would you hear an outcry from the people about the safety of aircraft. But we’re not hearing enough about the fact that these 300 people are dying each and every day,” the Nassau County executive said.

“This isn’t about politics. It’s about the money going to programs and going to healthcare facilities that have this track record of getting results, of saving people’s lives,” he said.

The Post earlier this month reported on a bipartisan lobbying effort by prosecutors — led by Suffolk County DA Ray Tierney and Staten Island DA Michael McMahon — to prevent some dealers of fentanyl from being released back on the street following their arrests, allowing them to sell more of the highly addictive and dangerous drug, thanks to New York’s lax bail law.

Under New York’s 2019 criminal justice reforms, only Class A felony drug offenses are eligible for bail.

Legislators from both parties agreed the bail law law needed to be tightened to give judges more discretion to order bail and detain deadly fentanyl peddlers pending trial.

“Among the countless flaws with so-called criminal justice reform, the inability for my prosecutors to request bail for any level of drug dealing short of A-1 Felony charges means countless poison peddlers are immediately let out onto the street after my team works countless hours along with NYPD Detectives to build a case and make an arrest,” McMahon told The Post.

“It is offensive not just to us, but to the countless Staten Islanders who have lost a loved one to overdose or had their family torn apart by the ravages of the fentanyl and drug crisis that has plagued our streets for far too long.”