House Republican urges new Trump AG Blanche to shut down Biden-era NYC heroin injection sites

Nicole Malliotakis has been banging this drum for years, and honestly, good for her. OnPoint's two sites in Washington Heights and East Harlem let people walk in, use heroin or fentanyl under supervision, and walk back out. No arrest, no treatment mandate, nothing but a nurse standing by with naloxone in case things go sideways. The Biden Justice Department looked at that setup and decided not to enforce the federal law that plainly bans operating a place for the purpose of using illegal drugs. That's not a technicality. That's a choice.

Supporters will point to overdose reversals inside the facilities, and sure, nobody dies on the spot if there's a nurse right there. But that's a low bar for a policy that was sold as a bridge to recovery. Most of what these sites actually do is manage the immediate risk of the drug use they're facilitating, not end it. If the goal is fewer addicts, an injection room with clean needles and no requirement to ever get clean isn't obviously getting us there. It's harm management dressed up as harm reduction, and the neighborhoods hosting these sites have noticed the difference between the two.

Malliotakis isn't asking for anything radical here. She's asking the Trump Justice Department to enforce a statute that's already on the books, the same one the last administration simply chose to ignore. That's the actual story: not a debate about compassion versus cruelty, but whether federal law bends to whichever city officials decide they don't feel like following it.

Todd Blanche doesn't need a new theory of drug policy to act. He needs to open the federal code and start reading.