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Mayor Adams Announces New Proposal to Further Support New Yorkers Struggling With Substance Use Disorder, Address Public Drug Use

August 14, 2025

Watch the video here at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b5NKR-IBouI


Mayor Adams Proposes “Compassionate Interventions Act” to Build on Successful Advocacy and Passage of Key Pieces in Adams Administration’s Supportive Interventions Act That Now Helps Address Severe Mental Illness Crisis on City Streets and Subways 

Legislative Change Would Allow Medical Professionals to Transport Those Who Appear to Be Struggling with Substance Use Disorder and Allow Medical Professionals in Hospitals,

With Court Approval, to Mandate Treatment for People Struggling With Addiction When Earlier Measures, Including Voluntary Transport and Treatment, Were Unsuccessful 

Plan Includes Funding for Expanded Substance Use-Specific Outreach Teams, New Incentive Pilot Program to Keep People in Treatment 

Mayor Adams’ Proposal Would Put New York In Line with 37 Other States That Already Authorize Involuntary Commitment for Substance Use Disorder

Part of Adams Administration’s “End the Culture of Anything Goes” Campaign, Highlighting Mayor Adams’ Efforts to Change Culture, Laws, and Investments That Improve Quality of Life and Prevent Public Disorder on City Streets

NEW YORK – New York City Mayor Eric Adams today announced a new legislative change he is proposing in the 2026 state legislative session to support people struggling with substance use disorder and address public drug use on city streets that degrades quality of life and leaves a feeling of disorder among many city residents. The “Compassionate Interventions Act” will give clinical professionals the authority they need to bring someone who appears to pose a danger to themselves or others due to substance use disorder to a hospital and allow a judge to mandate treatment if the person is unwilling to enter treatment voluntarily. The change would help put New York in line with 37 other states that authorize involuntary commitment for substance use disorder as it builds on Mayor Adams’ successful work since the start of the Adams administration to address the interwoven crises of severe mental illness, addiction, and homelessness playing out on city streets.

Additionally, Mayor Adams today announced a $27 million investment focused on improving access to substance use disorder treatment through outreach and enhanced treatment strategies. The plan will add more teams on the ground dedicated to engaging people struggling with substance use, enhance back-end coordination of care across outreach teams, and launch new programs to keep people engaged in treatment once they start.

Since coming into office, the Adams administration has fundamentally shifted the conversation and produced results in addressing street homelessness and severe mental illness, refusing to continue walking by New Yorkers in clear need of intervention, and declares this new proposal as the next step to increase support and build a safer, more compassionate city for all residents.

The announcement was made during a signature speech on confronting the challenges of drug use in public spaces hosted by the Manhattan Institute and comes during Mayor Adams’ week-long “End the Culture of Anything Goes” campaign. The effort highlights the work the administration has done to change the culture and laws that prevented people with severe mental illness from getting the help they needed while making the investments necessary to support outreach, harm reduction, wraparound services, and housing to make lasting impacts in lives and communities. Mayor Adams is bringing the same energy, investment, and approach that is showing results among people with untreated severe mental illness to addressing the crisis of public drug use playing out on city streets and helping people overcome addiction. Through the End the Culture of Anything Goes campaign, Mayor Adams is unveiling his vision to build on the progress his administration has already achieved by pursuing state legislation, and making budget investments and policy changes at the city level, that would move the needle on public drug use, incentivize treatment, and take the compassionate steps necessary to prevent people from being left in dire condition on city streets.

“Our administration has made incredible progress on cleaning up our streets and getting people the help they need. We have changed the conversation around involuntary transports for people with untreated severe mental illness, implemented new ground-level outreach initiatives, helped pass state legislation to expand our toolkit, invested hundreds of millions of dollars in wraparound services, and more. And while we have made our system work better to address severe mental illness and homelessness, we often hear from New Yorkers that there are still too many people in need of help. Today, through our ‘End the Culture of Anything Goes’ campaign, we are putting forward our vision to support those dealing with substance use disorder and address public drug use on our streets and in our subways through the ‘Compassionate Interventions Act,’ because ending ‘anything goes’ means changing the reality of how we support those in crisis,” said Mayor Adams. “Our proposed legislation will build on our success in Albany and give medical professionals the tools they need to get people connected with treatment, while our $27 million investment in outreach and treatment will expand the support available to people dealing with addiction. Our administration refuses to turn our backs on New Yorkers in need, and with today’s announcement, we’re laying out a vision that will help get everyone the support they need. In the name of public safety, public health, and the public interest, we must rally to help those in crisis because ‘anything goes’ is worse than nothing at all.”

Compassionate Interventions Act

In the upcoming state legislative session, the Adams administration will pursue legislation to authorize involuntary hospital transport and hospital admission of a person who is dangerous to themself or others due to substance use disorder. Under current New York law, involuntary removal to a hospital for evaluation requires that a person “appears” to be mentally ill, as well as dangerous, and for the person to later be admitted to the hospital for treatment, a clinician must diagnose a mental illness likely to result in serious harm to that person or to others. The law currently does not allow involuntary transport of a person who poses a danger to themselves or others due primarily to substance use disorder. This prevents involuntary admission in the many cases where a person does not appear mentally ill but presents a significant danger to themselves or others due to an untreated substance use disorder.

This effort will build on the Adams administration’s successful advocacy in 2025 to clarify, in the current law for involuntary treatment of mental illness, that extreme self-neglect creating a risk of serious physical harm makes a person a danger to themself. In next year’s legislation, the Adams administration will seek to have this enlightened definition of “danger” apply as well in the evaluation of someone struggling with addiction.

Updating the state’s involuntary commitment law would bring New York in line with 37 other states that authorize involuntary commitment for substance use disorder. Having similar provisions in New York law would greatly enhance the ability of outreach teams to ensure that individuals struggling with addiction receive appropriate medical evaluation, as well as give hospitals the ability to retain such patients when they are seen in emergency rooms. Currently, many such patients are released from emergency rooms despite doctors’ grave concerns for their or others’ safety, only because the risk stems from substance use disorder rather than mental illness. While effective treatments are available and routinely offered to patients in a hospital, often, those struggling with addiction are not ready to accept this help voluntarily.

The Compassionate Interventions Act will also incorporate several important legal reforms from last year’s Supportive Interventions Act that Albany has yet to take action on, such as recognizing a risk of psychiatric deterioration as a type of danger to oneself that may require a mental health commitment and mandating that hospitals screen all psychiatric inpatients for potential court-ordered Assisted Outpatient Treatment upon discharge.

Creating New York City’s First-Ever ‘Contingency Management’ Program

Under the Adams administration’s plan, the city will invest $27 million to expand existing services to enhance engagement for those who need addiction care by utilizing evidence-based interventions that focus on linking people to treatment, and especially, retention in treatment. Transport to the hospital, while important, is only temporary. That is why Mayor Adams’ plan includes multiple investments and innovative programs to connect more people in emergency rooms with longer-term treatment — saving lives and improving the quality of life and strength of the community.

The Adams administration will launch a pilot program called ‘Track to Treatment,’ which utilizes contingency management, a treatment approach that provides existing patients with small rewards for positive behavior, including engagement in addiction care. This proven approach will effectively motivate patients with addiction challenges to continue with their treatment plans after discharge from NYC Health + Hospitals emergency programs. Program participants will receive clinically supportive rewards which can be extended or deactivated based on their clinical need and for engagement in care. To date, the most effective large-scale contingency management implementation effort has been conducted through the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. Years after implementation, over 90 percent of the initial agencies continue to utilize contingency management.

The pilot program is designed to pair the contingency management approach with sustained behavioral health and medical treatment for existing patients. Treatment options will include medication-assisted treatment, such as long-acting medications (LAMs) for opioid and alcohol use disorder. LAMs include medications that prevent patients from feeling the effects of substance use, curb cravings, and protect from overdose. Additionally, LAMs significantly reduce barriers to obtaining and adhering to medications, because they are administered on site and provide continuous medication, which last for a week to a month. The pilot program will be run by NYC Health + Hospitals with an initial investment of $5.1 million, with enhanced engagement around LAMs for eligible patients starting in September.

Additionally, the city will strengthen the successful nonfatal opioid overdose response program, Relay, which provides peer support to individuals transported to hospital emergency departments following a non-fatal overdose, with the goal of connecting people to treatment and services they need to avoid future overdose. Relay teams serve over 2,500 New Yorkers annually. Through a $2 million initial investment, the city will provide Relay participants with cell phones to ensure follow-up and more successful outcomes in treatment after discharge. This effort aims to disrupt visits to hospitals, jails, and courts, and support sustained engagement in care, housing, family, and community relationships.

Boosted Funding for Substance Use Disorder Outreach and Treatment

The New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (DOHMH) operates 14 syringe service programs citywide, which offers drop-in spaces, wellness activities, and access to health, mental health, and substance use disorder services. Currently, five of these locations in Upper Manhattan, Midtown West, and the South Bronx have outreach teams that engage people on the streets and connect them with local drop-in centers where they can receive additional health services and access hot food, showers, laundry machines, and treatment referrals. In 2024, the teams made 8,000 referrals and had 25,000 engagements. To expand upon this work, the Adams administration will add an outreach team to every location and give all teams one clinician to enhance their ability to connect people to treatment in real time. This will support getting more people off the streets, into treatment, and, when necessary, enable assessment and 9.58 involuntary removal actions. The expected investment will be $14 million.

Additionally, the plan announced today will add staff across DOHMH, NYC Health + Hospitals, and the New York City Department of Social Services to oversee and focus specifically on coordinating care for patients with complex behavioral health needs that frequently cycle between systems with dedicated harm reduction staff to address those with substance use disorder. The expected investment will be $2 million.

Finally, the Adams administration will create a new drop-in space in “The Hub,” a major commercial center along Melrose Avenue in the south Bronx, to address community concerns of public drug use, public intoxication, and overdose. This drop-in center will operate on a low-threshold model, where people can come inside to seek respite, eat meals, and use laundry, showers, and other hygiene services. At the same time, the drop-in center will have medical, peer specialist, and mental health staff to respond to overdoses in the area and provide opportunities for engagement in substance use and mental health services. This service will support people experiencing homelessness and who use drugs, and will be located in an area with exceptionally high rates of fatal overdoses. The expected investment will be $4 million, and builds on Mayor Adams’ "Community Link" multi-agency operation that has been operating in The Hub since February 2025.

“End the Culture of Anything Goes” Campaign

As part of his End the Culture of Anything Goes campaign, Mayor Adams made a series of announcements this week promoting the administration’s efforts to help New Yorkers struggling with severe mental illness and substance addiction, while simultaneously addressing quality of life and public safety on New York City streets, which includes:

Mayor Adams Long History of Supporting Those in Need

Mayor Adams has prioritized investments in outreach teams to engage the hardest-to-reach New Yorkers. In February 2022, Mayor Adams launched the Subway Safety Plan to address public safety concerns and support people experiencing unsheltered homelessness, including some of the city's hardest-to-reach New Yorkers with mental health and substance use challenges, on New York City's subways. Since the start of the plan, over 8,600 New Yorkers have been connected from the subways to shelter and 1,000 have been connected to permanent affordable housing. These outreach efforts, along with others, such as Subway Co-Response Outreach Teams (SCOUT) and Partnership Assistance for Transit Homelessness (PATH), encounter a range of people living unsheltered with various needs.

Mayor Adams has also made supporting New Yorkers with severe mental illness a top priority since entering office. In 2022, the Adams administration first announced an ambitious plan to support unsheltered New Yorkers with untreated severe mental illness, which included a new city protocol on involuntary removals, as well as a package of proposed state legal reforms to maximize the city’s ability to serve this population. Since then, the Adams administration has developed new programs, like SCOUT and PATH; added 1,400 new Safe Haven and stabilization beds; and successfully advocated for — over three years of persistence — changes to state law passed in 2025 that remove barriers to psychiatric care for those unable to recognize their own need for it.

“The Compassionate Interventions Act represents a bold and humane step forward in addressing the substance use crisis affecting too many of our communities,” said New York City Councilmember Yusef Salam. “By equipping clinical professionals with the tools they need and expanding access to treatment, we’re not only saving lives—we’re restoring dignity. I support Mayor Adams’ vision to treat addiction not with punishment, but with compassion, care, and a commitment to real recovery.”

“For far too long, the South Bronx has been devastated by the opioid epidemic, where we continue to experience high rates of overdoses,” said Pedro Suarez, executive director, Third Avenue Business Improvement District. “While I deeply appreciate the work that so many providers have done around harm reduction and substance abuse intervention, relying on a strictly voluntary system has serious limitations. With the rise of lethal substances such as fentanyl, we must ensure that individuals struggling with the most severe addiction get the treatment that they need so that our communities are not repeatedly exposed to trauma and blight. I look forward to continuing working with the city and our local stakeholders to revitalize the South Bronx.”

“New legislation is needed,” said Barbara Askins, president and CEO, 125th Street Business Improvement District. “The 125th Street BID has been working through their Interagency Coordination initiative and Community Link for the last three and a half years, and the common response from outreach providers is that there is very little they can do if the person refuses services. We have had some individuals in our district that have been out on the street two to five years and we have not been able to get results because of the currents laws. It is time to realize that we need a way to provide much needed services.”

“Understanding addiction should not be criminalized should not mean anything goes in our city; we cannot continue to allow those suffering from addiction to wander our communities endangering themselves and others” said Tom Harris, president, the Times Square Alliance. “Compelled treatment for addicts will save lives, prevent overdoses, reduce incarceration, give families options for helping loved ones, and further Mayor Adams successes in restoring a sense of safety in our city. We applaud Mayor Adams for his determination to challenge the status quo and change the way we provide services and support for those suffering on our streets too ill to realize they need help.”

Below are Mayor Adams’ remarks, as prepared for delivery, at the Manhattan Institute:

Good morning. It’s great to be with you all today at the Manhattan Institute.

Since joining the NYPD, in 1984, my life’s work has been building a safer city for our fellow New Yorkers, and I came into office focused on keeping New York “the safest big city in America,” because public safety is the prerequisite to prosperity and the foundation of urban life. That work has paid off.

As your mayor, I am proud of the progress we have made bringing down crime and violence over the last three and a half years; reducing shootings, homicides, and other major crime categories to record lows.

We are also equally proud of our efforts to improve quality of life across the city, including the deployment of rapid-response Quality-of-Life Teams. Since April, these Q-Teams have been zeroing in on problems such as noise complaints and illegal parking, as well as homelessness-related issues, outdoor drug use, aggressive panhandling, and other serious concerns that affect New Yorkers’ quality of life.

Over the next two weeks, we will complete this rollout citywide, with Q-Teams present in every precinct in New York City, and, this week, we have taken our efforts to improve quality of life even further with the launch of our campaign to “End the Culture of Anything Goes.”

We want every New Yorker to know about the work we are doing to change the culture around quality-of-life issues, including our efforts to update laws that too often prevent people with severe mental illness from getting help and support.

Addressing public health and public disorder is at the core of what New Yorkers rightfully expect from their city government. New Yorkers must be able to go about their lives without having to court chaos and dodge disorder at every step. Most importantly, we must stop leaving behind the New Yorkers most in need, because when anything goes, nothing is possible.

Ending ‘anything goes’ means more than changing the culture; it means changing the reality of how we support those in crisis. It means making the investments necessary to support outreach, harm reduction, wraparound services, and housing — services that make lasting impacts in lives and communities.

For over three years, our administration has taken the necessary actions to address the crisis of severe mental illness that New Yorkers see playing out every day on our streets. I often think back to the first weeks of our administration, when we lost Michelle Go.

Her life was tragically cut short by someone dealing with severe mental illness who was not given the help he needed. Decade after decade, we walked past New Yorkers who were dealing with severe mental health issues. 

Far too often, we left our brothers and sisters on their own to find help.

We had a mental health system that was basically a revolving door, where a person would come in, receive medication, and then leave a few hours later without any kind of long-term plan. This administration wasn’t going to let the status quo continue.

Our work began only a few short weeks after Michelle’s life was taken. We announced our Subway Safety Plan to help connect New Yorkers in need with services and help, and to make sure our subways were safe for all who relied on them.

Over the last three years, the progress we have made is remarkable. Since that launch, more than 8,600 New Yorkers in need of housing have been connected to shelter, with over 1,000 formerly-homeless New Yorkers who once lived on our subways now in permanent housing. And when you add in our street-level efforts, that number grows to over 3,500 New Yorkers — people who were once living on the streets or in the subways who have now been placed in permanent housing.

We also launched new outreach programs, like SCOUT and PATH, to serve the hardest to reach New Yorkers, and in the nine months since launching PATH alone, we have had over 13,500 contacts with unhoused New Yorkers and provided services nearly 4,000 times.

We’ve opened 1,400 Safe Haven and stabilization beds, and invested in a $650 million homelessness and mental health plan that will give patients a place to continue their treatment after being discharged from the hospital. 

We have also put our opioid settlement funding to good use, with 2024 seeing the first decline in overdose death rates since 2018. This work is critical, and we have paired it with an aggressive investment in beds and staffing, places where people in crisis can get shelter, get help, and get on the path to stability.

But we didn’t stop there.

We knew that the standard tools were helpful, and we worked to strengthen them; but it was clear they didn’t reach everyone. There were still too many New Yorkers on our streets struggling with severe mental illness who were unable to recognize that they needed help.

So, in year one, we proposed a major policy shift to expand our use of involuntary removals for people whose severe mental illness was putting themselves or others in harm’s way.

I was one of the first — and most emphatic — voices to call for wider use of involuntary removals and commitments, and while most New Yorkers were clear that this was needed, and the right thing to do, at the time, it was portrayed as deeply controversial, including by many of the elected leaders and community groups that now support it today.

This was once described as a non-starter, but in the three years since, we have seen a monumental shift in the conversation.

This year, our partners in the state Legislature clarified our laws, opening the door to a new era of meaningful reforms and lasting change.

This legislation explicitly states that when mental illness prevents someone from meeting their basic needs of food, clothing, shelter, or medical care, that person poses a danger to themselves and requires treatment.

This legislation also requires hospitals to work more closely with outpatient providers; gives more decision-making authority to psychiatric nurse practitioners in our hospitals; empowers families to get their loved ones involuntary help; and improves assisted outpatient treatment to close the gaps in the system that prevent people from getting lasting care. 

This legislation ended the debate and set us up to effectively treat those suffering from serious mental illness. It is a huge step in the right direction, and I want to thank Governor Hochul and our partners in state government for getting it done.

Thanks to the training of first responders, hiring additional nurses to help people on the street, and tireless advocacy, we’ve seen our laws strengthened, our investments in treatment increase, and most importantly: real results.

We’ve made unprecedented progress getting help to New Yorkers struggling with severe mental illness, including those who are hardest to reach and most desperately in need.

And while we’ve made the system work better to address severe mental illness and homelessness, I often hear from New Yorkers who say that they still see too many people in crisis on our streets.

They are not wrong.

While we have made progress, public drug use is still a problem on streets across our city and across this country. From The Hub in the Bronx to Washington Square Park in Manhattan, illegal drug use and the quality-of-life issues that come with it are far too common, creating serious problems for residents, visitors, and small business owners.

The evidence is right there in front of us: people openly using illegal drugs on the streets and in our parks or passed out in doorways and sidewalks; encampments littered with syringes and vials; and unsanitary conditions that are a threat to public health and public order.

This cannot be allowed to continue.

We must help those struggling finally get treatment, whether they recognize the need for it or not. Addiction doesn’t just harm individual users; it tears apart lives, families, and entire communities, and we must change the system to keep all New Yorkers safer.

Today, I’m putting forward our vision to support those who, for too long, have been viewed as a lost cause: “The Compassionate Interventions Act.” These proposals will address public drug use and help more New Yorkers struggling with addiction get the help they need.

First, we are asking state lawmakers to extend the lifeline of involuntary commitment to those struggling with serious addiction. We have already made it easier to use involuntary commitment to help people with untreated severe mental illness get care, and the Compassionate Interventions Act will give medical professionals the legal authority they need to transport someone who appears to be struggling with addiction to a hospital for evaluation and support.

This legislation also proposes that — just as we have done for severe mental illness — once the person makes it to a hospital for evaluation, doctors should have the ability to seek a court order

to mandate treatment for substance use, even if the person’s addiction makes them unwilling to accept treatment on their own.

Let me say it again, to be clear: this authority would belong solely to the doctors and nurses

responding to people in need, and it would be the single most effective tool in helping end the drug abuse crisis we see all around us.

This is an expansion of the work we first proposed on severe mental illness three years ago, when we called for an end to the days of ignoring people who were clearly experiencing a mental health crisis in public.

In addition to giving doctors and nurses the tools they need to actually help those struggling with addiction, we are also going to boost outreach in hotspots like the South Bronx and Lower Manhattan, and invest in newer strategies like “contingency management” for people with substance use disorder.

Contingency management involves offering incentives to those who accept treatment and stop using drugs; this model has shown promise in other cities across the country and at the U.S. Department of Veterans’ Affairs facilities across nationwide.

All of these strategies are part of our larger effort to improve public safety and drive down crime rates across our city, an issue I ran on and one that still resonates with New Yorkers

all across the five boroughs.

I am proud of the historic progress we are making keeping New Yorkers safe, but public safety isn’t just about statistics. It’s about feeling confident that you and your family can go to work, go to school, or get on the subway in a safe and orderly city — one where people are being looked after, not looked away from.

A thoughtful society should think about how to help you, sand a government that gives a damn, doesn’t give up on anyone. That is why I’m here and what our team is working for, and we need help from all New Yorkers, including everyone in this room.

So, as we look forward to a new legislative session in Albany, we are asking for your support of the Compassionate Interventions Act. It will help those caught in the grip of addiction recover; improve quality of life across our city; and build a culture of compassion instead of a place where “anything goes.”

Because anything goes is worse than nothing: it’s an admission of failure, a dereliction of duty. New Yorkers deserve more than that, more than just giving up and getting by.

In the name of public safety, public health, and the public interest, we must rally to help those in crisis, pass this essential legislation, and keep New York City the safest big city in America,

the greatest city in the world to start a business, and the best place to raise a family.

Thank you.

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