Pain Killers

Dear Mayor Bill De Blasio

        Hi, my name is Aaron Roman and I live in Staten Island I don’t know if you know or not

but there is a huge drug problem infecting our borough. There are so many deaths consisting of

heroin and pain killer drugs. This problem needs to be controlled and stopped immediately

before anyone dies, the numbers speak for themselves.

        Lets start with pain killers. Pain killers have always been a problem in the five boroughs,

but in Staten Island specifically it has become a huge topic for discussion. In 2010 a statistic

showed that pain killers killed more staten islanders then car crashes or even murder. Now that

statistic is pretty crazy wouldn’t you say so. Also in 2010 one prescription drug called oxycodone

was in every four out of 10 residents houses in staten island. These number are scary one person

named Diane Arneth the executive director of community health action of staten island and a

member of tackling youth substance abuse group said “We always think about car crashes, and

we always think about murder being this violent way to die but there were more people who died

of opioid overdose, that’s kind of startling.” Also in 2010 for staten islanders the number

translated to 8.4 deaths per 100,00 residents that is a scary statistic might not seem crazy but

staten island blew everyone else out the park, Brooklyn coming in at 2.4 deaths per 100,000

residents at the high end and Manhattan coming in at 1.2 deaths per 100,000 residents at the low

end, very scary numbers. With that being said from 2005 to 2010 staten island has skyrocketed

by 180 percent according to health department statistics.  

As you can see staten island is clearly on a steady uprise in unintentional overdoses caused by

opioid analgesics not even a little but a lot higher then any other borough.

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Now getting into how effects the residents of staten island, when you go to any of the train

stations on staten island there are always, always people doing some sort of bad thing wether it

be smoking cigarettes, smoking weed or even selling drugs. I personal sometimes don’t feel safe

when taking the train late at night it is sometimes very dangerous and I have personally seen it.