Dear Friends and Fellow Business Owners,
 
It’s painful to remember the summer of 2021. Over one horrible week, the lives of Nicole Eckardt, Fausto Rafael Herrera Campos, Swainson Brown, Matthew Lapiana, Seth Tramontana, and Navid Ahmadzadeh were cut short.
 
All of these deaths – accidental overdoses from cocaine laced with fentanyl – were senseless, but they were also preventable. Had our community had immediate access to Narcan (naloxone), an emergency medication that is administered in the case of opioid overdose, these vibrant young people would have had another chance at life.
 
As the head of the Greenport Village Business Improvement District, and a member of this amazing, compassionate community, I am reaching out to ask you to help me prevent more tragedies like the one we faced in 2021. The Greenport Village Business Improvement District (BID), Stony Brook Eastern Long Island Hospital (SBELIH), Greenport Harbor Brewing Co., and Community Action for Social Justice (CASJ) have collaborated to create Narcan Rescue Stations for Greenport business establishments.
 
If you elect to participate in this vital and life-saving program, we will provide you with training for administering (naloxone), as well as a sign designating your business as a Narcan Rescue Station and, most importantly, a kit with the live-saving medication and administering instructions. The program has been underwritten by the BID, SBELIH, Greenport Harbor Brewing and CASJ and comes at NO COST TO YOU.
 
Greenport is a special community, and I saw first-hand how the overdose deaths in 2021 affected each and every one of us. Let’s come together now to make sure that we honor the legacies of those we’ve lost by ensuring nobody else meets with the same tragic fate.
 
 
Richard W. Vandenburgh, President
Greenport Village Business Improvement District