OnPoint NYC, the nonprofit that was the first in the nation to openly offer supervised drug consumption services, celebrated its fourth anniversary Thursday by trumpeting its positive community impact, making its case triumphantly and with a touch of defiance following nearly a year of uncertainty and hostility from the federal government.
In a press conference, OnPoint’s leadership, a state senator, and New York City’s acting health commissioner vowed that the organization would continue its work providing holistic services to people who use drugs in New York City, including physical and mental health care, acupuncture, case management, and its overdose prevention centers, where participants can use illegal substances under supervision.
In the four years since OnPoint expanded to include supervised consumption at sites in East Harlem and Washington Heights, the organization has served nearly 7,000 unique clients and facilitated nearly a quarter-million “utilizations,” or instances in which participants used drugs at the organization’s facilities. Perhaps most importantly, OnPoint has intervened to reverse 1,983 overdoses in its consumption spaces, known as overdose prevention centers or OPCs. No OnPoint client has died while at the facility — nor has there been a documented death at any officially sanctioned supervised consumption site worldwide.
“In an OPC, you don’t have to hide, you don’t have to rush, and you don’t have to feel shame,” said Pia Marcus, OnPoint’s director of overdose prevention. “When you’re hiding and you’re rushing, the risk of infection and risk of overdose goes up. So you can see what a different experience it is to be in an OPC setting. These are uniquely intimate spaces that build trust really quickly, and they open doors to other kinds of care.”
The nearly 2,000 overdose reversals, Marcus estimated, have saved New York City’s government over $55 million in ambulance rides, hospitalizations, and other costs.
The press conference came nearly one year into Trump’s second presidency. In July, the White House issued an executive order on homelessness that threatened to withhold funding from and crack down on supervised consumption sites, which it said “only facilitate illegal drug use and its attendant harm.”
Given its controversial nature and unclear legal footing, OnPoint has kept a fairly low profile in the past year, making its celebratory press conference all the more noteworthy.
The organization has not been contacted by federal law enforcement, according to its executive director Sam Rivera, it did lose funding from an existing federal grant. Only a small share of OnPoint’s overall funding came from the federal government; its drug consumption rooms are operated using entirely nongovernment funding.
“We did take a hit on one of our grants, and it was really unfortunate, because it’s a grant that allows us to provide treatment services to our participants, and also some medical services,” Rivera said. “We’re focusing on reestablishing those services immediately. We are an organization that stands strong, and immediately reached out to our partners, our funders, and other people who could step in and support us to make sure those vital services are still in place.”
OnPoint’s press conference appeared designed to make clear that, even beyond the organization’s own ambitions, it enjoys backing from city and state higher-ups. One state senator representing the northwest Bronx, Gustavo Rivera, highlighted his pending legislation that would authorize supervised consumption sites to operate statewide. He also sharply criticized Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) for her refusal to allow opioid settlement dollars to flow toward OnPoint and potentially other future sites.
New York’s acting health commissioner, Michelle Morse, also drew a pointed comparison between the city’s values and those of the Trump administration, arguing the federal government’s hostility would inspire the city health department to work even harder
“It’s very sad for me to be with you all and say that our federal government is no longer supporting what are clearly evidence-based strategies with significant impact, life- saving impact,” said Morse. She added: “I know that harm reduction saves lives. I don’t just know it, it’s borne out in study after study, evaluation after evaluation, qualitative and quantitative work, and that is, itself, public health success in action.”
Though overdose deaths have fallen nationwide in recent years, mortality has remained particularly high in some historically marginalized communities. During the press conference, Morse gave specific credit to OnPoint for last year’s decrease in overdose deaths among the Black and Latino populations near the organization’s two facilities — the first decline since 2018.
There is limited evidence on whether supervised consumption sites elsewhere in the world, including in Canada and Europe, significantly drive down mortality. But even beyond the nearly 2,000 overdose interventions, OnPoint is quick to point to its other successes, from connecting participants to care or helping to clear public spaces of potentially hazardous drug-related waste, like used syringes.
Other than stripping certain grants, the Trump administration has given little indication about whether it will engage further with OnPoint’s two sites in Upper Manhattan as well as a third site in Providence, R.I., that opened in 2024.
Project 2025, the conservative manifesto that has guided much of the Trump administration’s early actions, took aim at harm reduction organizations, warning that the White House would cut off support for “woke nonprofits with leftist policy agendas.”
But the administration has taken few concrete actions on drug policy other than moving to reclassify marijuana and issuing the hardline executive order on homelessness.
Trump’s nominee to lead the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, Sara Carter Bailey, has not yet been confirmed by the Senate. And nearly a year into his administration, Trump has not chosen a leader for the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. Art Kleinschmidt, who was appointed as a deputy and served as the agency’s de facto head since April, announced last week he was leaving SAMHSA for a post at the Department of Homeland Security.
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