Spencer Norris is a reporter at New York Focus investigating drug policy with a focus on the state’s addiction treatment facilities. He was previously the investigative data reporter at the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, where his coverage of sex trafficking won statewide awards and got legislation introduced to protect victims.
The Sheriffs’ Association lobbied against a bill to provide medication for opioid addiction in jails. Since it passed, they’ve failed to evaluate thousands of people for treatment.
Men locked up in the Broome County jail describe an opioid treatment program so shoddy, they risk withdrawal, relapse, and overdose.
The addiction epidemic is getting worse in the Capital Region. Through local zoning laws, residents fight to keep the state’s solutions out of their backyards.
Mixed evidence was piling up about a signature New York drug policy experiment. Then the state stopped releasing the data.
In the state’s byzantine system for addiction services, some people don’t know they have tenants’ rights. Some don’t have them at all.
Formerly incarcerated “peers” offer drug counseling to people in county jails — when they can get in.
The governor buried policies in her budget proposal that would give police and prosecutors more leverage over people with opioid addictions.