The US government will investigate whether ‘safe places of infection’ for drug users can prevent overdoses, despite critics’ warnings that America is getting soft on drugs.
More than $5 million will be given to New York University and Brown University to study two sites in NYC and Providence, Rhode Island.
About 1,000 current drug users will be enrolled with the goal of studying the costs of the sites and potential savings for healthcare and criminal justice systems.
Volunteers are given the tools they need to inject drugs like fentanyl and heroin, including clean needles, and are supervised by medical experts.
Safe injection sites — which offer drug paraphernalia to users without question — first popped up in the US during Covid, but were criticized for not offering counseling or challenging addicts.
The federal government will invest $5 million over the next four years to research safe drug injection sites in New York and Rhode Island. Pictured: Homeless people in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, openly use drugs on the street
The rollout of safe drug injection sites in New York City has been criticized. Some claim the ads for the site promote drug use (pictured), while residents living near the sites complain that the local environment has deteriorated
A now infamous poster promoting “safe” drug use in NYC read, “Don’t be ashamed to use, be empowered to use safely.”
A record 107,000 Americans died of overdose that year, with the majority of those deaths caused by fentanyl.
The Biden administration, under which this grant was awarded, has been accused of indulging in the deadly drug, refusing to implement policies that would prevent it from getting across the southern border, and investing instead in programs to limit its impact.
“There’s a lot of debate about overdose prevention centers, but ultimately we need data to see if they work or not, and what impact they might have on the community,” said Dr. Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), which is funding the new research.
Proponents of safe injection sites argue that drug users in these places can safely take the substance they are addicted to without fear of overdosing or contracting a disease such as HIV from using a shared needle.
The drugs are also provided for free, which could potentially reduce the criminal activity that some addicts resort to in order to get enough money to pay for the drugs.
There are two officially approved locations in New York City – in Washington Heights and East Harlem – both of which will open in 2021. Both facilities are operated by the non-profit organization OnPoint NYC.
The East Harlem site is located at Lexington Ave and 126th St, and many social media users on TikTok and Instagram have called the nearby subway station, Lexington and 125th, a “zombie land” in the year since it opened.
The area was already known as a place where the trafficking in drugs and other illegal material flourished, but local residents complain that the situation has worsened.
David D’Alessio, who has lived near 126th St and Lexington for ten years, told The City“I’ve seen things I’ve never seen before. Including brutal open dealing, people defecating (in broad daylight), needle users openly injecting drugs… and even a man getting oral sex between parked cars.”
Rhode Island, which will be home to a site in NIDA’s study, authorized the program that same year. The Brown University site will be the state’s first.
California and Vermont lawmakers passed bills to allow safe injection sites, though vetoed by Gov Gavin Newsom and Gov Phil Scott, respectively.
Pennsylvania lawmakers voted to ban the sites.
Internationally, there are nearly 200 branches in Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Iceland, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Switzerland and Ukraine. according to the Drug Policy Alliance.
Critics argue that giving addicts drugs without any preconditions simply allows them to wallow in their addiction.
Many also fear that opening these sites will draw addicts and the homeless to the neighborhood, worsening conditions for the local population.
While there are a limited number of drug injection sites in the US, there are already many harm reduction programs in major cities that help addicts.
The number of deaths from fentanyl in the US increased sharply in the 2010s. At the beginning of the decade, 2,666 Americans died of fentanyl overdose. This figure rose to 19,413 in 2016. Covid made the situation even worse, with a record 72,484 deaths recorded in 2021
In cities like Portland, Philadelphia, and San Francisco, nonprofits offer users the anti-overdose medication Narcan and materials such as pipes and straws with which to smoke.
In many of these cases, users are addicted to the highly addictive – and deadly – synthetic opioid fentanyl.
Fentanyl has been rampaging through the US in recent years. The drug killed a record 75,000 Americans by 2021 — a fivefold increase from the 19,000 deaths it caused five years earlier in 2016.
Fentanyl is up to 100 times more potent than morphine, one of the most widely used painkillers in the world.
Only a small dose of fentanyl is needed to cause an overdose. Just two milligrams — the equivalent of five grains of salt — is enough to cause death.
Because it is incorporated into other popular medications, many people who die from overdoses do not know they are taking fentanyl.