The New York City borough of Staten Island is a largely white, middle-class bastion of cops and firemen. It is also home to one the country’s worst opioid epidemics. In a community of less than half a million people, every five days someone there dies from an opioid overdose, according to New York City’s Department of Health. Staten Island’s drug problem has gotten so bad, in fact, cops now walk the streets armed with naloxone, a drug that counteracts the life-threatening effects of opioid overdoses.
The crisis reflects a broader epidemic sweeping across New England that has ravaged primarily working- and middle-class communities. As in areas devastated by crack in the 1980s, in Staten Island local rappers have stepped up to chronicle the borough’s drug problems.
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