Eighteen demonstrators were arrested Thursday outside the U.S. Attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York, where the feds are publicly mulling a crackdown on the city’s two overdose prevention centers (OPCs).
The arrests came on International Overdose Awareness Day, a commemoration of the tens of thousands of people who die of overdoses each year and a call to action to prevent them in the future. The 18 people arrested represent the 18 New Yorkers who die of preventable overdose deaths each day, activists say.