The 2025 legislative session has seen multiple states attempt to authorize overdose prevention centers (OPC). Some proposals didn’t have the support to make it out of the chamber where they were introduced, but at least four have continued to move forward and are currently in committee. In at least two states, anti-OPC bills have advanced as well.
New Mexico introduced an OPC authorization bill that got a favorable report from the state Health and Human Services Committee in February, but didn’t progress farther than that. Maryland, which proposed authorizing up to six sites, and Hawaii, which recently expanded access to harm reduction services, have followed that same trajectory. So has Massachusetts, which in 2024 saw senators unanimously advance an OPC bill that didn’t get across the finish line in time.
New York’s long-awaited OPC bill is currently with the Senate Health Committee, which has been reviewing it since late April. Legislators have introduced versions of the bill each session going back to 2017.
After two months without an update, Maine’s OPC bill is scheduled for a committee hearing May 15.
In 2021 New York City opened the first two sanctioned OPC in the United States under its own local authorization, a move that other cities have been hesitant to replicate because of the potential the Department of Justice will sue while OPC remain federally banned under the 1986 “crack house statute.” San Francisco harm reductionists openly operated an OPC in the Tenderloin Center in 2022; then-Mayor London Breed (D) shut it down later that year.
Connecticut’s OPC bill was introduced by the Public Health Committee, which has attempted similar legislation in the past. SB 1285 would authorize up to four sites in different parts of the state, while prohibiting use of state funds to support them, as is expected of such legislation.
Maine’s OPC bill was approved by both chambers in March. After more than two months without an update, the bill will reappear May 15 for a hearing with the Criminal Justice and Safety Committee.
Illinois proposed an OPC bill that’s been in the House Rules Committee since April, and in early May acquired a new sponsor. “Nothing About Us Without Us,” states HB 2929 as the first of its core principles. “OPS programs and services shall be formulated with transparency, community involvement and direct input by people who use substances.”
The Arizona legislature has preemptively banned “narcotics injection sites.”
In Rhode Island, a bill to extend the current OPC pilot to March 2028 reinvigorated opposition to the initial authorization itself, but has progressed to the Senate Health and Human Services Committee. Rhode Island was the first state to authorize OPC, followed by Minnesota and Vermont, but remains the only one of the three to have opened a site.
Minnesota is in a holding pattern with no imminent plans to move forward. Vermont, which authorized OPC in a tumultuous 11th-hour override of the veto issued by Governor Phil Scott (R) in 2024, is preparing to open a site in Burlington. A bill to repeal that authorization was introduced to the Vermont legislature in January, and is still in committee.
In at least one other state, an anti-OPC effort has progressed further. On May 7, the Arizona legislature passed a bill to preemptively ban municipalities from authorizing the facilities. If signed by Gov. Katie Hobbs (D), HB 2798 will explicitly prohibit “narcotics injection sites,” an unconventional term sponsors have chosen to describe a ban that’s not specific to narcotics nor to injection. The bill clarifies that the definition of the term includes non-injection methods of drug consumption as well as non-narcotic (i.e. non-opioid) substances. Arizona has never previously introduced legislation to authorize OPC, and wasn’t attempting it this session either.
Screenshot (cropped) from “Rhode Island’s First Overdose Prevention Center” video by Marilena Marchetti
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