July 2,2018
the staff of the Ridgewood blog
Hackensack NJ, on June 27th New Jersey Attorney General Gurbir Grewal held press conference announcing the results of an innovative five-county collaboration involving law enforcement, county government, and addiction service agencies to connect individuals suffering from the disease of addiction with vital recovery services through “Operation Helping Hand.”
“These results are extraordinary and are a testament to the dedicated work of all who participated in this unprecedented operation in New Jersey. While we know some of these heroin users who accepted detox beds or support services will lapse into drug use again, there can be little doubt with these numbers that lives were saved – that heroin users who would have become statistics of the opioid epidemic will instead recover and reclaim their lives.”
“The results of this five-county operation reaffirm my strong belief that Operation Helping Hand is a program we need to implement throughout New Jersey and offer as a model to other states across the country. We can’t arrest our way out of the opioid epidemic, but we have learned that we can, in fact, save lives by making arrests, if we engage in this type of collaboration among law enforcement, government, and the addiction-service community.” – Attorney General Gurbir Grewal