Governor Cuomo announced today that a small $272,000 slice of his big budget pie will be set aside for naloxone kits and heroin-overdose response training in New York State's 3,000 school districts.
The emergency kits, which block opioid effects—albeit temporarily—during a heroin-induced seizure, have technically been available to New York schools since last year, when Cuomo launched his Combat Heroin campaign. However, this is the first time money has been set aside to train school personnel, explicitly.
This announcement comes on the heels of Cuomo's four-week #CombatHeroin PSA campaign, which launched in mid-February, featuring online and television commercials, as well as posters that appeared on the Staten Island ferry and subway lines, as well as Long Island Railroad and Amtrak trains. Even as the PSAs rolled out, New York State received $8.1 million in federal funds, specifically geared towards preventing heroin and prescription opioid overdoses among the 12-to-25 set.
The initiative seems long overdue, considering fatal heroin overdoses outpaced homicides in New York City last year, again.
