Zohran Mamdani, the mayor of New York, announced on Thursday the recruitment of 500 individuals to assist those struggling with dependencies as part of a $12 million program funded by money from settlements with opioid manufacturers.
The recruited individuals will be former alcohol or drug users who are now recovered and have been trained to support others.
The aim of this four-year program is to reduce the number of deaths from overdose (2192 deaths in 2024 in New York City alone).
“Too few people have access to treatments and resources for dependencies,” said the Democratic mayor, speaking from an addiction treatment center in Brooklyn.
Like other cities and states in the U.S., New York is receiving a portion of the funds from extensive financial settlements with pharmaceutical companies, which played a central role in the emergence and exacerbation of the opioid crisis.
In June 2025, the city had already received $190 million in this regard and is expected to receive $550 million by 2041, according to local media reports.
Between 1999 and 2023, approximately 806,000 people died from opioid-related overdoses in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Purdue Pharma and other opioid manufacturers and distributors are accused of promoting widespread prescription of painkillers like OxyContin since the 1990s, while concealing their highly addictive nature.
Last year, several American states reached an agreement with Purdue and the former owners, the Sackler family, as part of a bankruptcy plan that would redistribute the funds to communities and individuals affected by this public health crisis.
