Health & Fitness
Needle Vending Machines May Come To Union Square, City Plans Show
The city is planning to install a unique type of vending machine in Union Square Park, one with clean syringes and life-saving medications.
UNION SQUARE, NY — Vending machines that give out clean needles and overdose-reversing medication could soon appear in Lower Manhattan's Union Square, according to plans recently released by the city.
In December, a nonprofit working with the city's Health Department released a request for proposals, seeking organizations to run a number of vending machines that will be installed in high-need neighborhoods and areas around the city.
Those areas included Union Square, according to the request for proposals (RFP), which was released on Dec. 8 and reported on this week by the New York Post. Union Square Park is a 10-minute walk from Washington Square Park and not far from the West Village.
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In addition to clean syringes, the machines would distribute naloxone — the drug often known by its brand name, Narcan, which can reverse opioid overdoses in progress — as well as other "wellness supplies."
News of the vending machines comes on the heels of the East Harlem safe-injection site that the city opened on Nov. 30. Staff at the site, along with a second location in Washington Heights, had already reversed 43 overdoses by mid-December, according to the city.
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The efforts come amid an alarming increase in overdose deaths. More than 2,000 people died from overdoses in the city in 2020 — the highest number since recording began in 2000 — and nearly 600 people died during the first quarter of 2021.
The new vending machines will also be placed in Harlem, five neighborhoods in the Bronx, two neighborhoods in Staten Island, and Rockaway, Queens.
Bronx and Harlem neighborhoods have the highest rates of overdoses in the city from April 1, 2020, to March 31, 2021.
The vending machines have been tried in Europe, Canada and Australia, as well as in Cincinnati and Las Vegas.
It will cost the city $730,000 to install the unspecified number of vending machines, and operators will be chosen by Jan. 31. The Health Department did not immediately respond to questions about when the vending machines would be up and running.
Patch reporter Nick Garber contributed to this report.
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