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Mostly Cloudy Heroin, a scourge that crosses all lines
Assembly task force convenes hearing on a growing epidemic
"This isn’t cocaine. This isn’t a Saturday-Sunday drug. It’s 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year," Bill Flanagan, the Nassau County Police Department’s second deputy commissioner, told the assembly of 20 elected leaders, law enforcement officials, drug-treatment specialists and educators at Levittown Public Library on Thursday.
Flanagan was speaking of heroin, which in recent years has ravaged the lives of hundreds of county residents, in particular young people ages 16-29. In 2009, roughly 400 people were arrested for heroin possession or distribution in Nassau.
Flanagan delivered his remarks at a state Assembly Minority Task Force on Crime in the Communities hearing, organized by Assemblyman David McDonough, a Republican from North Merrick and the task force’s chairman, and Assemblyman Thomas McKevitt, a Republican from East Meadow.
Town of Hempstead Supervisor Kate Murray, a Republican from Levittown, said the heroin epidemic "crosses ethnic, economic, racial lines."
"There is a sense among suburbanites," she said, "that drug abuse happens more in urban areas, the big, bad cities. It is pervasive on Long Island, and it crosses every neighborhood demographic."
Lawrence Mulvey, Nassau’s police commissioner, said that heroin has become such a scourge that his department now considers it the top crime-fighting priority, surpassing DWI and illegal gun possession, though he was careful to note that they remain important priorities, as well.
He noted angrily that the federal government recently cut drug-education dollars, which he said was a mistake given the times.
Mulvey said that heroin addiction often begins with prescription drug abuse. A teenager steals a bottle of OxyContin or another prescription opiate in the medicine cabinet and shares it among friends at a party. The trouble is, he said, OxyContin and other such drugs are expensive, so the teenager moves on to heroin, which can sell for as little as $5 for a small packet of the drug.
Richard Dormer, the Suffolk County police commissioner, said, "We can’t arrest our way out of this problem. The schools, the parents are the key…The parents, they’re all scared to death."
