Opioid Crisis Compels New York to Look North for Answers

Opioid Crisis Compels New York to Look North for Answers

TORONTO — An aging construction worker arrived quietly in the building’s basement, took his seat alongside three other men and struck his lighter below a cooker of synthetic heroin.

A woman, trained to intervene in case of an overdose, placed a mask over her face as his drug cooked and diluted beneath a jumping flame. He injected himself, grew still and then told of the loss of his wife who died alone in her room upstairs — an overdose that came just a few months before this social service nonprofit opened its doors for supervised injections.

“I don’t want to say, ‘What if, what if,’” said the 52-year-old man, known as Gordie. He said his wife, Carol, had talked about kicking her habit before her death in September. “It never happened,” he said.

By J. DAVID GOODMAN and IAN WILLMS from NYT New York https://ift.tt/2GBGlQn