ROBERT GAVIN

Albany Bureau Chief

ALBANY – Warning that New York is "behind the times," a Buff alo emergency physician told a legislative panel Tuesday the state needs to pass a law to allow paramedics and other first responders to carry opioid withdrawal drugs when responding to overdoses.

"This shouldn't be that complicated," Joshua Lynch, a nationally recognized expert on addiction, testified before the Assembly Committee on Alcoholism and Drug Abuse during a hearing on the prevalence of additives to synthetic opioids in the state.

Lynch, a senior physician with UBMD Emergency Medicine, said paramedics in New York cannot carry or administer Suboxone, even though it was sanctioned in 2023 by the State Emergency Medical Advisory Committee and the State Emergency Medical Services Counci

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