The coalition includes current and former elected district attorneys, state attorneys general and President Biden’s US Massachusetts Attorney nominee, Rachael Rollins. They filed an amicus brief requesting that the Supreme Court hear Safehouse’s case. An amicus brief is a document from a group that is not party to a lawsuit, but that shares relevant information with the court for consideration.

“We wouldn’t criminalize a parent who allows a child to use their house to safely consume drugs so they’re under a watchful eye,” Miriam Krinsky, director of Fair and Just Prosecution, told Filter. FJP organized the coalition of prosecutors and law enforcement officials behind the brief. “We shouldn’t criminalize a nonprofit … that is trying to do what 11 countries in the world have done.”

Safehouse, a Philadelphia-based nonprofit, has been at the forefront of the US battle to open authorized SCS for years. In February 2019, Philadelphia’s then-US Attorney William McSwain—appointed by President Trump—sued to block Safehouse from opening. McSwain argued that Safehouse would violate the federal “crack house” statute, which prohibits “maintaining drug-involved premises.” That law was written in 1986, by Delaware Senator Joe Biden.

Safehouse first won the case in February 2020, when a US District Court ruled in its favor. The court found because Safehouse’s intent is to save lives—not sell state-banned drugs—its work is legal. But Safehouse was forced to pause its plan in the face of local anti-drug backlash. Then, in January 2021, an appeals court ruled against it—once again invoking the “crack house” statute, writing that the SCS would have “significant purpose of drug activity.”

“The prior Administration’s attempt to block a public health response to the overdose crisis is perplexing.”

The case remains in litigation. In late August, Safehouse requested that the January ruling to be reviewed. The newly filed amicus brief was written in support of such a review.

The brief argues that the federal government should not criminalize an evidence-based, lifesaving intervention like SCS, especially with overdose at an historic high. More than 100 authorized sites operate around the world, and none have ever had someone die of an overdose on their watch.

In July, Rhode Island made history by becoming the first state to ever authorize an SCS pilot. This victory has shone a light on cities across the country—including in California, New York, Massachusetts and New Mexico—where advocates are fighting to open SCS or have introduced legislation to do so.

“Given the stark evidence that criminalizing drug use only increases its harms, the prior Administration’s attempt to extend the Controlled Substances Act to block a public health response to the overdose crisis is perplexing,” the brief read. It argues that it would be inappropriate to use federal drug law to criminalize other emergency health measures like syringe service programs or naloxone distribution.

The so-called crack house statute “was never intended to target public health facilities,” the brief continued.

President Biden’s Department of Justice can choose to break from Trump’s position opposing Safehouse, and signal to the Supreme and District Courts that it won’t pursue the case.

“The hope is with many states looking to move forward … they will provide a green light not simply for Safehouse,” Krinsky said, “but also other states and jurisdictions to move forward and not be subject to criminal jurisdiction if they choose to do so.”

Photograph courtesy of Christopher Moraff

The post Criminal Justice Leaders Urge Supreme Court to Hear Safehouse Philly Case appeared first on Filter.

Cuomo resigned a week after New York Attorney General Letitia James delivered the results of an investigation that found the governor had sexually harassed multiple women, including former aides and other state employees. He will also be remembered for his inaction and callousness toward marginalized New Yorkers during his 10 years and three terms in office—and, by many, for his perpetuation of the War on Drugs in particular.

“All of us are relieved,” Biz Berthy, a drug policy organizer with VOCAL-NY, told Filter. “Those of us fighting to end overdose in New York have long known the toxicity of his administration. He’s built out a legacy of attacking the most vulnerable among us, especially those susceptible to overdose.”

While calls for indictment grow louder, advocates are also now turning their attention to Hochul and the role she’ll play in addressing—or exacerbating—the state’s overdose crisis.

A Long Record of Cruelty

For more than three years, Cuomo has stonewalled New York City and Ithaca from launching pilot safe consumption sites (SCS), also known as overdose prevention centers. After the NYC pilot got a green light from Mayor Bill de Blasio in 2018, Cuomo swooped in to impose a requirement that any proposed SCS program first undergo a review by the state health department before opening. (Eric Adams, the Democratic nominee for NYC Mayor, also supports SCS). Over 30,000 people have died of drug overdose during Cuomo’s tenure as governor.

Cuomo also actively prevented low-income New Yorkers from accessing medication for opioid use disorder. On New Year’s Day 2020, he vetoed a bill to make buprenorphine and methadone more accessible for people with Medicaid—while removing barriers for people with private insurance.

In April 2020, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, Cuomo signed a last-minute, must-pass budget bill reinstating cash bail for most nonviolent offenses, just months after advocates had succeeded in reducing its use. As a result, thousands of people who had not been convicted of any crime were estimated to become incarcerated at a time when coronavirus roiling prisons and jails throughout the country.

Cuomo additionally withheld funding to syringe service programs for six months during the pandemic, causing a shortage of syringes and other critical supplies. This came as a cluster of new HIV cases was reported in upstate Monroe County, and hepatitis C cases were rising statewide. He also berated people who inject drugs in public, and urged law enforcement to arrest them.

Cuomo conspicuously failed to address an historic homelessness crisis in New York state. According to Coalition for the Homeless there are about 67,000 unhoused people on any given night statewide—nearly twice as many as when he took office. This number does not account for unknown thousands of New Yorkers who sleep on the streets. Over the years, Cuomo has enacted numerous state budget cuts that effectively forced NYC to pay an increasing share of the burden to address its own homelessness crisis.

A New Chapter

Hochul will take office on August 24. On August 12, she announced that she will run for a full term in November 2022. But what kind of job will she do?

Hochul was a co-chair on Cuomo’s Heroin and Opioids Task Force. In June 2016, the task force presented a report to the governor with a series of recommendations for addressing opioid use, addiction and overdose in the state.

That report’s recommendations are generally in line with expanding harm reduction and treatment services by increasing funding more and removing barriers—like private insurance requirements—that prevent many people from accessing them. It also called for increased distribution of naloxone through pharmacies and in public schools and homeless shelters, providing more resources and housing for people in recovery without requiring them to be sober, and easier access to medicines like buprenorphine and methadone by repealing private insurance barriers.

The report made no recommendation of SCS, of decriminalizing and expanding access to sterile syringes, or of reforming drug penalties. It may simply be the case that the commission was making asks that it knew Cuomo would support. With Hochul now taking the most powerful office in the state, she has yet to make clear where she truly stands on these issues.

She will, however, likely have a warmer relationship with New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, who praised her as a “very reasonable person” and “an honest broker.” It’s possible that this could bode well for the long-awaited SCS pilot authorization.

“Many advocates are asking who is Kathy Hochul, because Governor Cuomo put her on the sidelines,” Berthy said. “It’s not clear how she approaches certain issues. She’s shown interest in reversing the overdose crisis. She doesn’t have a legacy of approaching these issues from a harm reduction lens, so there is some concern there.”

Berthy and other advocates have called on Hochul to sign an overdose prevention package by International Overdose Awareness Day on August 31. The package includes measures to expand access to sterile syringes, allow all patients on Medicaid to access medicines like buprenorphine or methadone, and provide those treatments in all prisons and jails.

Photograph of Andrew Cuomo by Zack Seward via Flickr/Creative Commons 2.0.

The post The End of Governor Cuomo and His Shameful Legacy on Overdose appeared first on Filter.

One of the most urgent actions we can take is to authorize safe consumption sites (SCS). They exist legally in 11 countries, and have finally been sanctioned in the United States in the form of a two-year pilot program being implemented in Rhode Island. It remains to be seen where a site would be located in Rhode Island, and the Biden Administration has not commented on the federal legality of such a site. 

In Massachusetts, we’ve been forced to watch as thousands of people have died of preventable overdose while legislation that would authorize the creation of our own SCS has languished. But now, we may finally be on the cusp of change.

In 2020, comprehensive legislation authorizing SCS was filed in the Massachusetts State House of Representatives and Senate. It is set to be heard on September 27. The bill would enable a local town or city’s board of health to approve a pilot SCS for 10 years, set minimum health and safety requirements for an SCS, and provide legal protections for participants, staff, property owners and the entity operating the site.

While the bill does not provide funding, new opportunities for funding streams independent of federal restrictions or oversight will become possible as money begins to stream into Massachusetts from the settlement of various opioid litigations. 

“We can’t discount out any option that has the potential to save lives from the opioid epidemic,” State Senator Julian Cyr (D-Truro), chair of the Joint Committee on Mental Health, Substance Use and Recovery and sponsor of the legislation, told Filter. “As opioid use disorder continues to ravage too many lives in the Bay State, the legislation we filed would pilot supervised consumption sites in the Commonwealth and offer public health workers a crucial new tool to save lives.”

Unlike other US attempts to site an SCS pilot, Massachusetts may not face a high level of opposition.

Unlike other US attempts to site an SCS pilot, Massachusetts may not face a high level of opposition from either policymakers or residents. One city has indicated its willingness to host an SCS, and is engaging in a collaborative process to ensure community members are involved in the process moving forward. Somerville, located a few miles outside of Boston, has already produced a needs assessment and feasibility report and continues to build local support for a site with the backing of municipal officials. 

“About three and a half years ago I became homeless and had more time to talk to people who use drugs and read the data about SCS.” Tj Thompson, an organizer with SIFMA Now! told Filter. SIFMA Now! (Supervised Injection Facilities in Massachusetts Now!), a statewide grassroots advocacy organization with which I am also affiliated, has been fighting for SCS since 2016. 

“As soon as I started doing this, I realized that when you read any of the data, there’s really nothing bad about these sites,” Thompson said. “It’s better for the communities they’re situated in, better for people who use and don’t use drugs and better for people who are unhoused.”

Not a single fatal overdose has ever occurred at any of the 120 sanctioned SCS around the world. They save lives and improve public health outcomes. Research has also demonstrated how SCS would save an average of $4 million each year in US cities that implemented them, including Boston. In 2017, the Massachusetts Medical Society became the first state medical society in the country to endorse SCS. Legislation to authorize the sites was proposed in the Massachusetts State Senate that same year—but the bill never appeared on the floor for debate. 

By the following session, in 2019, the SCS proposal was replaced by the more politically feasible creation of a Harm Reduction Commission. The commission—a mix of state and local officials, legislators, law enforcement and harm reduction experts—was tasked with exploring which of the various possible interventions could be implemented in Massachusetts. Their official report, released in March of 2019, recommended what we already knew: that the state should pilot one or more SCS.

Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker, however, remained hostile to SCS, emphasizing their illegality under federal law. Similarly to the legalization of cannabis dispensaries in Massachusetts, policymakers can move forward if they want to, so long as they’re not being federally prosecuted. Baker’s stance was backed by the then-US attorney of Massachusetts, Trump-appointee Andrew Lelling. Though Lelling chose not to prosecute the state’s cannabis dispensaries, when it came to SCS he chose to argue that the issue was not one to be dealt with on the state level, calling it a “philosophical contest” best left to Congress.

Advocates are hopeful Rollins will continue to show support for an SCS pilot, and not prosecute any sites that open.

But soon, Biden-appointee and former Suffolk County District Attorney Rachael Rollins will become the new Massachusetts US attorney (once she is confirmed by the Senate). Rollins has been vocally supportive of SCS and their legality. Some advocates for SCS are hopeful that she’ll continue to show public support for an SCS pilot and release guidance that her office will not prosecute any sites that open. Others worry she’ll simply maintain the status quo.

But the tide in Massachusetts is shifting. A growing crisis has been met with growing demands to address the policy failures that are costing us so many lives. A new administration, new US attorney of Massachusetts and an increase in support among local officials and community activists mean we may finally be achieving the political landscape we need to authorize SCS.

“We really want to be ready for that [the passage of SCS legislation on the state-level] and have our shovel-ready program and projects ready to go,” said Doug Kress, director of Health and Human Services in Somerville, at a recent local town hall. “If that were to happen that would certainly ease much of the challenges that we might face.” 

State legislation would put a host community on stronger legal and regulatory footing. The currently proposed bill would require a site, such as the one that Somerville hopes to open, to have the support of the state Department of Public Health for regulatory matters, and would hand down clear protections from licensure revocation and criminal and civil charges.  

“It’s not going to be much longer that Massachusetts will be able to sit back and ignore that supervised consumption sites have saved hundreds, if not thousands, of lives around the world over the past 30 years,” Thompson told Filter. “Overdose death is a public health issue, and this is an evidence-driven public health solution.”

Photograph courtesy of SIFMA Now!

Abby Kim, former legislative director for Massachusetts State Senator John Keenan, provided legislative expertise on the forthcoming bill and its previous iterations.

The post In Massachusetts, Our Fight for Safe Consumption Sites Is Gaining Ground appeared first on Filter.

SCS reduce fatal overdose by giving people who use drugs a safe, supervised facility in which to do so. In addition to providing sterile equipment such as syringes, SCS staff can use readily available naloxone to reverse overdoses. There has never been a single overdose death at any known SCS in the world.

SCS staff can also refer visitors to other services including HIV and hepatitis C testing, substance use treatment and mental health care. SCS do not provide their participants with drugs, contrary to opponents’ claims.

Rhode Island’s hard-fought authorization isn’t permanent, at least not yet—it’s a two-year pilot program, with the condition that any facility must get local approval from its city council before opening. It is still, however, a massive victory in the nation’s broader struggle to legalize SCS. Where is New York on this same issue?

A Failure of State Leadership

New York harm reduction advocates had gained ground in 2017, successfully lobbying in Albany to introduce a bill authorizing SCS anywhere in the state. Lawmakers have revived the bill in every legislative session since then. It is currently sponsored by Senator Gustavo Rivera (D-The Bronx) and Assemblymember Linda Rosenthal (D-Manhattan).

In May 2018, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio made a landmark statement agreeing to support SCS. That same day, the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene released a report estimating that SCS would prevent 130 drug overdose deaths in the city each year. 

The plan was to get the city’s SCS up and running in six to 12 months. They would be housed at four syringe service programs (SSP) located across Manhattan, Brooklyn and The Bronx.

But then, Governor Andrew Cuomo effectively stopped them from moving forward by requiring they pass a “mandatory review” by the health department. Three years later, that review is still pending.

“The governor is the single block to us launching this pilot program.”

It also appears that Cuomo lied outright to advocates. Back in June 2018, they responded to his series of lukewarm commitments by planning a die-in at a Pride event supporting his re-election. One of his aides contacted organizers and persuaded them to call it off, in exchange for which Cuomo reportedly promised to sign onto SCS after the election. Once re-elected, Cuomo never acknowledged the agreement.

“The governor is the single block to us launching this pilot program that we could have had running years ago,” Jeremy Saunders, co-director of VOCAL-NY, told Filter. “We could have saved hundreds, maybe thousands of lives.”

“This is a governor who has opposed interventions regarding homelessness, reducing incarceration or increasing taxes on the wealthy. He opposes every demand that would improve the lives of poor, working-class, most people—until he is forced to do otherwise.”

The two-year pilot program proposed by de Blasio would still face challenges if Cuomo finally authorized it. Pilots can be less than ideal, because for SCS to survive longterm they need support from community residents, businesses and even police. There is also no guarantee that after that time period, the city and state would agree to let SCS continue.

“Knowing how New York works, funding doesn’t come until months after promised, and regulations take a long time,” Mike Selick, an associate director for the National Harm Reduction Coalition, told Filter. “Many of these programs may need to apply for funding and make changes to their building before really starting up. I just worry that the public support won’t come before the time the pilot [ends].”

Advocates are hopeful that Rhode Island’s authorization will make it easier for other states to enact similar legislation. While Selick is doubtful that Cuomo will ever sign off on de Blasio’s plan, he feels more optimistic about the legislation from Rivera and Rosenthal, which would allow SCS anywhere in New York state. Ithaca has already expressed interest. 

“We’re frankly at a point where our community just needs to act.”

“We’re frankly at a point where our community just needs to act. That is on us stepping up … forcing the government to take a position,” Saunders said. “We’ve long had the state’s support in setting up our [private] bathrooms that are a safe place to inject. I’ve shown them to people on national television. To open supervised consumption is such a minor change.”

As with all criminalized health care practices, underground SCS operate throughout the US and around the world without government approval. But SCS that open without authorization from city and state leaders risk staff and participant arrests, and of course the shutdown of the sites.

Besides risking seizure of buildings and equipment through civil asset forfeiture, the lifesaving SSP themselves could be lost if the governor revoked the special regulation that allows them to operate, or revoked the state funding that is so crucial to their budgets—funding Cuomo has not been above withholding in the past.

“Rhode Island can show other jurisdictions who are almost ready to pull the trigger that they can,” Selick said. “Everyone is hesitant to be first to do this. But once one place accepts, we’ll see lots of other cities following.”

Photograph via New York State

The post With Rhode Island Safe Consumption Win, Pressure Mounts on New York appeared first on Filter.

In June, the battle reached a tipping point when conservative City Councilor Roshena Campbell introduced a measure to ban any SCS from ever opening in the downtown area. It was defeated 7-4.

The state of Victoria, of which Melbourne is the capital, opened its first SCS in the city’s North Richmond area in June 2018, as part of what was originally a two-year pilot program. The trial had finally been approved by the state following political inquiries and public submission periods, multiple coroner inquests and findings from Australia’s first SCS in neighboring Sydney.

The North Richmond SCS prevented at least 21 fatal overdoses in its first 18 months of operation. Public injection prevalence also decreased in that time period, as did costly ambulance dispatches. The site had more than 119,000 visits by nearly 4,000 registered participants—even busier than the Sydney SCS. It was such a resounding success that in June 2020, the trial was extended and plans announced for the proposed SCS in Melbourne’s central business district.

“The number of clients registering and accessing the [North Richmond] facility demonstrates the need for an additional site,” Dr. Erin Lalor, the CEO of Australia’s Alcohol and Drug Foundation, told Filter. 

Melbourne’s central business district is a crucial access point for harm reduction services. Between 2015 and 2019, the state of Victoria saw around three fatal opioid-involved overdose per week, a large percentage of those deaths occurring in downtown Melbourne. Lessons learned from the Sydney SCS highlight the need for more of these sites, especially in high-population areas, since most participants cannot realistically travel significant distances to access them.

“The people most likely to be injecting drugs in public places are the ones who are struggling the most.”

The forceful opposition to the downtown Melbourne SCS is the inevitable result of media pushing out “sustained, hysterical reporting amplifying [only] the voices of the people most opposed,” Will Tregoning, the CEO of national advocacy group Unharm, told Filter. Media reports have showcased aggressive opposition and concerns from business owners, photos of syringe litter, headlines about “meth and heroin zombies,” and inaccurate claims about SCS outcomes.

“It’s a classic case of ‘War on Drugs’ exploitation by a media organization playing for attention and the ad sales that it brings,” Tregoning said. “The people most likely to be injecting drugs in public places are the ones who are struggling the most. It’s inevitable then that there will be people with concerns about an injecting center in the [business district], especially if they don’t understand how it works.”

Melbourne’s SCS backlash has been further exacerbated by the government’s own misleading and unbalanced messaging on drug use—despite calls even from police to move away from penalizing drug users and toward harm reduction policies.

“It’s hard to change policies if governments have a real fear campaign around use of drugs,” Gino Vumbaca, the president of Harm Reduction Australia, told Filter. “If you then want to change directions, it’s hard to bring people with you. You will always have opposition, but it’s about how you address that.”  

It’s no surprise, amid such messaging, that public sentiment around the proposed new SCS has been mixed, with up to 60 percent of respondents to media polls being unsupportive. Support for SCS in general is tenuous: Public approval for the North Richmond location dwindled from 61 percent to 44 percent since it opened, in spite of its quantifiable success.

In the meantime, the Melbourne government’s evaluation process for the second SCS continues as the region grapples with ongoing COVID shutdowns and a struggling national vaccine rollout.

“Peer-reviewed academic research is important, but it isn’t ever going to break down the stigma around drug use,” Tregoning said. To do that, we must “humanize addiction, and also show that drug use can be positive and safe.”

Photograph of Flinders Street Station, a train station near the location of the proposed SCS, via Wikimedia Commons/Creative Commons 4.0 

The post Melbourne Advocates Fight Backlash to New Safe Consumption Site Plan appeared first on Filter.

The legislation was approved by the House of Representatives last month, when lawmakers also accepted a Senate companion version. Last week, the Senate, which had passed an earlier version of the bill in February, approved changes and gave final approval, sending the proposal to Gov. Dan McKee (D).

The governor didn’t issue a statement on the legislation, but his office noted in a press release that he signed it along with more than 20 other bills.

Under the new law, individual municipalities will still need to authorize the facilities to operate in their jurisdictions during the two-year pilot program.

The bill was partly informed by recommendations from an overdose task force convened under former Gov. Gina Raimondo (D), and it also calls for the creation an advisory committee. That panel will be required to advise the state Department of Health on how to “maximize” the benefits of the centers.

“The opioid epidemic has become a tremendous public health crisis, with overdoses of prescription and non-prescription opioids claiming a record number of lives,” Rep. John Edwards (D), sponsor of the House bill, said in a press release when lawmakers sent it to the governor last week. “Not only do harm reduction centers severely mitigate the chance of overdose, they are a gateway to treatment and rehabilitation of people with substance abuse disorder.”

“These locations will be under the supervision of trained medical staff who can direct addicts toward substance use disorder treatment,” he said. “It’s a way to tackle this epidemic while saving lives in the process.”

Senate Health and Human Services Chairman Joshua Miller (D), who sponsored his chamber’s version of the bill, said that “if we are truly going to rein in the drug overdose epidemic, we must recognize drug addiction as the health problem it is, rather than as merely a crime.”

“People who are addicted need help and protection from the most dangerous possibilities of addiction,” he said.

Advocates cheered the historic achievement.

“Today’s victory in Rhode Island gives us hope that there are policymakers that are willing to actually lead and do what needs to be done to save lives in the face of one of the worst public health crises of our time,” Lindsay LaSalle, managing director of policy for the Drug Policy Alliance, said in a press release.

“With at least 92,000 of our friends and family members lost to overdose in 2020 alone, we simply cannot wait any longer,” she continued. “There are mountains of evidence, from years and years of experience in other countries, to show that these centers save lives, increase the likelihood of a person entering treatment and provide people access to other vitally important health resources.”

Haley McKee, co-chair of the Substance Use Policy Education & Recovery PAC, said she hopes the move will “set a precedent for other states to follow suit, with Rhode Island being the leader.”

The Rhode Island Senate in 2019 passed a similar bill to create a harm reduction center pilot program, but it did not advance through the House. And last year, a Massachusetts legislative committee approved a bill that would legalize safe injection sites, but it did not become enacted.

A similar harm reduction bill in California, sponsored by Sen. Scott Wiener (D), was approved in the state Senate in April, but further action has been delayed until the beginning of 2022.

The senator said in a press release that he’s “extremely disappointed” about the delay. However, it’s a two-year legislative session in California and so the current bill is still alive.

“I do believe we will pass SB 57 next year,” Wiener said. “It passed the Senate this year, and the Assembly Health Committee has repeatedly passed the bill over the past five years. I’m optimistic that the Committee will, indeed, pass the bill in January.”

Former Gov. Jerry Brown (D) vetoed legislation in 2018 that would’ve established a safe injection site pilot program.

This year, a federal court blocked a Philadelphia nonprofit from opening a harm reduction center but its backers are pursuing an appeal—and it’s not clear if the Justice Department under President Joe Biden will take a different stance on the issue than the Trump administration did.

In 2018, a congressional subcommittee approved legislation to specifically prohibit Washington DC from using local tax dollars to help open SCS. But that provision was not enacted and has not been reintroduced since.

A 2020 study found that people “who reported using supervised injection facilities on an at least weekly basis had a reduced risk of dying compared to those who reported less than weekly or no use of this health service.”

Meanwhile in Rhode Island, the House Finance Committee last week heard testimony on one of three proposals introduced this session to legalize marijuana for adult use. Legislative leaders and the governor’s office have indicated they’d like to reconcile the differences between those measures and potentially return to vote on a compromise bill later this year.

The Senate already passed a separate cannabis legalization measure last month.

* DPA previously provided a restricted grant to The Influence Foundation, which operates Filter, to support a Drug War Journalism Diversity Fellowship.

Photograph via Wikimedia Commons/Creative Commons 3.0

This story was originally published by Marijuana Moment, which tracks the politics and policy of cannabis and drugs. Follow Marijuana Moment on Twitter and Facebook, and sign up for its newsletter.

The post Rhode Island Makes History by Legalizing Safe Consumption Sites appeared first on Filter.

A bill to authorize the creation of SCS, or what the lawmakers are calling “Harm Reduction Centers,” has returned to the state’s General Assembly after first being introduced in 2019. This time, “there’s really been strong support,” Haley McKee, co-chair of the Substance Use Policy, Education, & Recovery PAC and a lobbyist in support of the newly reintroduced H 5245 and S 0016, told Filter. “I’ve seen a lot more involvement of people with lived or professional expertise.”

On February 23, the state Senate passed S 0016, which would establish an advisory committee to make recommendations to the state health department’s director on regulating SCS. However, it’s unclear when the House Committee on Health and Human Services—which is currently reviewing the chamber’s version, H 5245—will vote on it, much less when it will move to a floor vote.

If the House passes H 5245, and the legislation is signed by Governor Gina Raimondo, Rhode Island could be first state to legalize SCS. Lawmakers are defining the “Harm Reduction Centers” as “community based resource[s] for health screening, disease prevention and recovery assistance where persons may safely consume pre-obtained controlled substances.”

Unlike the House version, the Senate bill stipulates a liability protection explicitly shielding from arrest and prosecution at least “property owners, managers, employees, volunteers, clients or participants, and state, city, or town government employees acting in the course and scope of employment.”

The 10-person advisory committee must include three people with lived experience.

Of note, the 10-person advisory committee must include three people with lived experience—one “who has been recently incarcerated and currently being treated for a substance abuse disorder”; another who is “in recovery” and “works in the field of overdose prevention or recovery”; and one “who has suffered a drug overdose or a family member thereof.” One law enforcement officer must also be included.

The House Committee on Health and Human Services has reviewed the bill for a second time and heard testimony from multiple experts. McKee believes it is here, in the House, that the political fight for the SCS will play out; this chamber of the General Assembly has been less open to passing reforms. But “there has been a change in leadership in the House”—from conservative Democrat Nicholas Mattiello to the slightly more liberal Democrat Joseph Shekarchi —and she believes “the new House speaker is more fair to these kinds of reform.”

A diverse group of witnesses called on the House Committee to green-light the bill. Jorge Elorza, mayor of the state’s capital, Providence, recognized its potential to lower the number of fatalities. “By connecting people who use drugs with necessary health care professionals to prevent overdoses and make referrals for counseling or other medical treatment, the harm reduction centers may significantly reduce the impact of the overdose crisis on our communities,” Elorza wrote in his testimony.

Written testimony by Providence Mayor Jorge Elorza to the House Committee, dated February 9, 2021

Dr. Elizabeth Samuels, a Brown University professor of emergency medicine and an expert in substance use disorder treatment, agreed with Elorza, citing the breathtaking success of international SCS. “Across the over 120 centers in Canada, Australia and Europe, there has never been a death in a harm reduction center. Not one,” Samuels wrote in her testimony. “This alone should be reason enough to spur us to establish these facilities in Rhode Island.”

She also noted that, contrary to the derogatory smears of SCS as “shooting galleries,” people who access them are more likely to enter substance use disorder treatment. “I care for people who have experienced an overdose during every shift I work in the emergency department,” she wrote. “I know that we can and must do better for our neighbors and community members who have a substance use disorder or who use drugs.”

She added that most overdose patients decline treatment at the time of their emergency department visit. “This underscores the need for Harm Reduction Centers, a place where people can engage on their own terms with people they trust.”

Written testimony by Dr. Elizabeth Samuels of Brown University to the House Committee, dated February 23, 2021

“People who use controlled substances are members of our community,” wrote Bella Robinson, a sex worker activist and executive director of the local sex worker rights group, COYOTE RI. “We don’t want to see them to be arrested, and we don’t want them to die from an overdose”

The House bill is being held for further study. McKee is not quite sure of the timeline ahead, but said that the fact that it’s headed for its third review is not cause for alarm. “Most bills don’t get voted right out of committee.” McKee intends to focus on winning the approval of the House Speaker Shekarchi, whom she hopes to engage in further advocacy.

Despite all that, she remains excited for what’s to come:

“I’m cautiously optimistic we’ll have the first state law.”

Photograph of the Rhode Island State House via Wikimedia Commons/Creative Commons

The post Will Rhode Island Be the First State to Legalize Safe Consumption Sites? appeared first on Filter.

The area is described pejoratively as “Methadone Mile” and non-pejoratively as “Recovery Road.” One thing is clear, Mass and Cass is ground zero for twin wars: the wars on people who use drugs and people experiencing homelessness.

Deafening traffic noise from MBTA buses, flatbed tractor-trailers, cars, ambulances and police vehicles with sirens on full blast provides the intersection’s jarring soundtrack. The timing of traffic lights is confusing. Sixteen lanes of traffic converge on one of Boston’s five most dangerous intersections for pedestrians and cyclists, with an average of at least two injuries per month. It is this hazardous crossing that hundreds of people who are unhoused, using drugs and experiencing severe mental health issues must traverse daily to access services.

On a sizzling, sticky day last summer, the stretch is crowded with people socializing and taking care of business. A man rides by on a blue Citi Bike with a syringe between his teeth. A woman is hugging someone who is crying; I overhear that a good friend just died of an overdose. People pass by with the assistance of wheelchairs, canes, rolling walkers, plastic boot casts and back braces.

Sellers offer “Johnnies, Addies, Klonopins, Dubs.” A woman in a stained, gray sweat suit rolls by in a broke-ass wheelchair. She’s smoking and selling K2. A man carrying a black backpack announces, “Newports.” “How much?” I ask. $10. Menthol cigarettes are banned in Massachusetts and a bustling illicit market has sprung up, supplied by neighboring states.

A mobile sharps team is picking up discarded syringes. A church group set up a rack of free clothing, where they’re also handing out fresh fruit and bottled water. People offer each other snacks, cigarettes and face masks.

Two Colliding Worlds

Two opposite worlds face off against one another here. On the Newmarket Industrial District side of the divide, there are two methadone clinics: Boston Comprehensive Treatment Center and Health Care Resource Centers Boston. They sit amid a polluted, deindustrialized no-man’s-land of empty parking lots, and abandoned warehouses behind barbed wire fences or motorized metal gates with slates in the shape of spears.

They’re joined by a City Wide gas station, Bubbles Car Wash, the storefront Universal Church and fast food outlets. Tractor trailers and rusted shopping carts full of disintegrating electronic junk dot the landscape. Piles of garbage, cigarette butts and syringes carpet the ground. No trash cans, let alone sharps containers. Side streets have only one narrow sidewalk and few street lights. No place to sit down. Signs warn no parking, no stopping, no smoking, no trespassing, no loitering and POLICE TAKE NOTICE. Another announces, “All activities monitored by video camera.”

The area is a hollowed-out, heavily policed, mini surveillance state, and a textbook example of hostile architecture. And this is where hundreds of people must rush six days a week to line up outside in the early-morning darkness to get methadone. It speaks volumes about the oppression of methadone patients that these clinics are found in such spaces.

The math, as always, favors punishment and prison.

Looming over them all is the enormous Suffolk County House of Corrections. It has 674 cells, 1,892 beds, serves thousands of hot meals daily and cost $115 million to build in 1990.

Down the street, the Southampton shelter for men has only 400 beds; the Woods-Mullen shelter for women has just 200. No hot food is served. The math, as always, favors punishment and prison.

It’s common for people to cycle through all three institutions here—prison, shelter, methadone clinic—over and over.

The other side of the Mass-and-Cass divide is anchored by the mighty Boston Medical Center (BMC). It consists of historic brick buildings with green-trimmed roofs; of brutalist concrete buildings mixed with gleaming modern ones with light-filled atriums; of glass pedestrian bridges and pavilions named for wealthy, white male philanthropists.

It’s Boston’s “safety-net” hospital, (code for people of color, people who are poor and uninsured) and home to the level-one Klarman Emergency and Trauma Center. All the medical specialities vital to human health are found in the blocks surrounding the hospital, with a wealth of resources devoted to addiction medicine. The Grayken Center for Addiction offers office-based Suboxone prescribing, inpatient detoxification and behavioral health services. There is even an urgent care program called Faster Paths to Treatment.

People with complex medical needs shuffle and stagger past inaccessible healers.

The Boston Medical District, with its heliport and its deep bench of trauma experts, is smack-dab in the middle of an open-air drug scene. Hundreds of unhoused people use drugs in the nooks and crannies, stairs and entrances of BMC buildings, the ambulance bays and loading docks.

On the sidewalks, medical personnel in scrubs with lanyards dangling from their necks walk by human beings nodding off, people clearly in mental distress or physical pain. One man in a wheelchair picks at open sores on his swollen, gray feet. Another walks in circles over and over, making animal noises. Ambulances with ear-splitting sirens race through the streets.

It’s a stunning contradiction that people with complex medical needs shuffle and stagger past inaccessible nurses, doctors, pharmacists, public health experts, social workers and psychologists, every single day. Healers stepping over suffering humanity. This is the danger: that the public and health care workers will lose empathy when year after year they see people violate social norms like injecting drugs in plain view, defecating or urinating on sidewalks and acting in troubled or aggressive ways.

Collapsing Services and COVID

The situation worsened in 2014 with the abrupt closing of a homeless shelter and the Andrew House Detoxification Center on Long Island, which was connected by bridge to the neighboring city of Quincy. The bridge was closed that year because it was near collapse; it’s estimated that over 700 people were dumped onto the streets.

To many, the problems seem intractable. But there is a solution. Boston is one of the richest cities in the country and has the resources to house everyone. Boston Mayor Martin J. Walsh has allocated millions to preserve and create affordable housing, but not enough: The number of unhoused people has not significantly decreased.

Around the city, the residential construction sites most in evidence are for luxury high-rises like Bullfinch Crossing. According to the website, “Bullfinch Crossing reconnects iconic downtown Boston neighborhoods and propels this heavily transit-served site forward into a 21st century global center.”  Two glass towers with over 800 housing units will anchor the development. None of them will be affordable. On the South Boston waterfront another new neighborhood was created for the rich: the Seaport District. At the opulent St. Regis Residences, prices for a non-penthouse condominium with harbor views start at $2 million. Their tagline: “Live as you wish.”

COVID exposed massive inequality in the US in a way that was harder than ever to deny.

COVID-19 terminated the indoor ecosystem of services to people at Mass and Cass and forced the city to relocate them. “Because of the pandemic, we brought services outside in March,” Jennifer Tracey, the director of the Mayor’s Office of Recovery Services, told Filter. “The people we serve had to have access to bathrooms and hand washing. When a “comfort station” was created to meet this need, “the demand was so high we had to hire additional staff, including medical.”

But COVID did something else. It exposed massive inequality in the US in a way that was harder than ever to deny. On display for all to see was the enormous population of people who are homeless, hungry, uninsured, mentally ill, destitute and struggling with addiction. Moreover, the pandemic revealed the irrationality and cruelty of a means-tested welfare state that doesn’t help people in “normal” times, let alone now. Directives to seek medical attention if you are symptomatic for COVID-19, to shelter in place and practice social distancing are an insult to those who are uninsured, live on the street or sleep in crowded shelters.

The Comfort Station

Standing outside the comfort station, I asked Lisa,* a Black woman who was waiting there, what was going on inside. “This is a safe haven for drug users,” she explained. “A nurse watches you while you shoot up and makes sure you are safe.”

Lisa held her nose, crinkled up her face and cautioned me not to use the Porta-Johns. I ventured inside, to a small outdoor space with tents, jam-packed with people standing or sitting on the ground in various stages of shooting drugs. Parked on the left against a chainlink fence were racks full of sterile injection equipment. Three gray, portable sinks weren’t working, so instead, people were using a garden hose to wash. Several staff were on site, handing out supplies, answering questions and troubleshooting.

As well as serving as an unsanctioned, outdoor overdose prevention site, the comfort station functioned as a psychiatric drop-in center. Many people there displayed a range of what appeared to be psychotic symptoms, from mild to severe. People I spoke with seemed under-medicated, over-medicated or not medicated at all. As I stepped outside, a fight began between two men, and a woman intervened to break it up.

On the sidewalk I met Brian.* “It’s just another day on the avenue,” he said. “It’s a carnival.”

From his duffle-bag, he took out a large, amber prescription bottle, popped the top off and fished out a couple of capsules of gabapentin, the anti-seizure medication. They cost $1 per pill. “Gaba enhances the effects of other drugs,” Brian told me while making a quick sale.

“Why don’t the housing the homeless people come down here? This is where we all are.”

We moved around the corner to Albany street and found shade in front of the Maxwell Finland Building. Embossed above the entrance: Boston Public Health Commission. A small group of people were preparing to inject drugs, eating McDonald’s burgers, washing up (there were two portable sinks that worked), getting dressed and sleeping. It was like an outdoor apartment.

Brian, who is white, explained that he used heroin for over a decade in an attempt to “fix a feeling with another feeling.” Suboxone helped him stop, and he’s only returned to using one time, “My son helps me to not use.”

With a mix of resignation and frustration, Brian talked about being homeless for five years. Recently, he’d learned that an application for housing had been sent to the wrong address.

“Why don’t the housing the homeless people come down here?” he asked. “This is where we all are. Come here and help us apply for housing. Why do we have to go to an office?”

In yet another absurd contradiction, directly across from the Comfort Station is the Hampton Inn & Suites: 175 air-conditioned rooms, an indoor pool, free WiFi and complimentary breakfast. Why not house people there during a deadly pandemic?

Liberty and Law Enforcement

I returned to Boston in October. I know the city well, having lived there for a decade. The “Cradle of Liberty” has a rich political history. The siege of Boston opened the American Revolutionary War. In the famous Boston Tea Party, the Sons of Liberty dumped chests of black tea into the harbor because they believed there should be no taxation without representation. The city is steeped in the notions of freedom and personal liberty of which the ubiquitous American flag is a potent symbol.

But along Mass and Cass, these notions are illusive. The people I spoke with are not free. Their lives are destabilized by chronic homelessness, by episodic stints of incarceration, by social policies and drug laws that punish and leave them without basic life necessities. They are perpetually stuck on the bottom rung of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Need, struggling to meet the essential human requirements of housing, food, water and clothing.

He has untreated PTSD and an opioid use disorder, and isn’t wanted on Long Island or off.

Steve,* a Black man, had LOVE tattooed across his knuckles and several crosses on thick string wound around his neck. He wore Mickey Mouse pajama bottoms and a t-shirt emblazoned with the face of jazz trumpeter Miles Davis. We spoke through a chain-link fence on Mass Ave while he rearranged various items in plastic bags.

Steve reached inside a big bulge in his pants and pulled out a hat, scarf and gloves. He unleashed a bitter, angry and confusing monologue about his doomed attempts to secure housing, evictions, his own overdoses, and losing “lots of friends to overdose.” He has untreated PTSD and an opioid use disorder, and isn’t wanted on Long Island or off.

Leaving Steve, I walked to the comfort station—to find it gone! Not a trace of the community or the chaos remained. It had been erased.

That’s when I ran into Frosty Frost, a stylish, middle-aged white trans woman carrying a black and gray Prada handbag, milky-white hair combed back from her forehead. Frosty informed me that the comfort station had moved a few blocks away.

I immediately registered Frosty’s hard New England accent, with R’s dropped. When I broke out the quintessential catchphrase, “Park the car in Harvard Yard,” because I’m from Massachusetts, we two yankees broke into laughter.

Frosty was the unofficial “Mayor of Methadone Mile,” she said. A presence in the area for years, she demonstrated an encyclopedic knowledge of local drug markets and the history of the US War on Drugs. She offered to be my tour guide, and together we headed toward the relocated comfort station.

As we walked, the ubiquitous law enforcement presence made Frosty angry. She recalled a police raid in the area last summer called Operation Clean Sweep. It was an assault on the homeless community at Mass and Cass. Officers destroyed sleeping encampments and threw wheelchairs into garbage trucks. They detained people until they showed ID, then scanned them for outstanding warrants. Over 30 people were arrested. The Massachusetts ACLU filed a lawsuit against the city.

Not everyone opposes the police presence. “The police have a new street outreach team of seven, trained on crisis intervention, recovery coaching and they work really closely with us in the neighborhood,” Tracey said. “That team has been very helpful in the success of the comfort stations and works with us to get people into treatment.”

But why are the police, who harass and arrest people, doing street outreach? The movement to defund the police rightly identifies that as a major problem. When people with untreated mental health issues encounter law enforcement, they are 16 times more likely to be killed than the general population, and people of color are at even greater risk. Resources and responsibilities to assist vulnerable groups need to be shifted away from the police and given to peer advocates and professionals.

Engagement and NIMBY-ism

After carefully crossing Melnea Cass Blvd, Frosty and I took a left onto Atkinson, a quiet side street off of noisy Mass Avenue. City officials had assembled a space where people could use drugs, plus tented areas with picnic tables, a shower trailer and hand washing stations with soap dispensers and paper towels. A gigantic white tent in the back contained the engagement center. Staff wore red “Engagement” T-shirts with a black arrow pointing up. Loud conversations and hip-hop music filled the air.

As Frosty and I talked, she was continually interrupted by people saying hello, asking to use her cell phone and whether she knew who had drugs for sale. Frosty used to sell drugs, and told me with a sly smile that her business was called, “Frosty’s Fine Pharmaceuticals.”

“People are tired of being moved along all day. So we built a space that would be like a living room.”

When she left me for a few minutes to help a friend, I headed to the engagement center, sat down at a table and took in the action in the cavernous space. It was heated by cylindrical aluminum duct pipes along the ceiling that made loud, soothing white noise. The center contained necessities for those who don’t have a home: charging stations, chairs, microwaves, two flat panel TVs, computers, bathrooms, showers, coffee, Café Delight Non-Dairy Creamer packets, sugar, styrofoam cups, snacks and water dispensers. People were mopping the floor and sweeping up trash. A few were sleeping off in the corners. The vibe was chill.

“People don’t have a place to be during the day,” Devin Larkin, a social worker and the bureau director for Recovery Services at the Boston Public Health Commission, told Filter. “They’re on the street and they use sidewalks to do what we do in our living room. They are tired of being moved along all day. So we built a space that would be like a living room.”

The center is also designed to eliminate bureaucratic barriers to health care and drug treatment. Wound care, COVID-19 and HIV/STI testing, PrEP initiation, same-day detox, buprenorphine induction and sedation monitoring are all available. Staff I talked with off the record pride themselves on the fact that no one has ever overdosed and died on their watch.

It’s easy to see the principles of harm reduction in action at the engagement center. There are no security staff policing the space, people sleeping are left alone, and people can refuse medical or psychiatric services. “We are meeting people where they’re at and providing services that are acceptable to them,” said Larkin. “We ask, ‘What do you need today?’ whether it’s clean socks or a medical visit.”

The next day I got on a rusty old Orange Line train and exited at the Massachusetts Avenue stop. I walked five blocks past beautiful, gut-renovated brownstones with languid staircases and massive, wooden double doors. Signs on several buildings advertised, BRAND NEW LUXURY APARTMENTS FOR RENT.

Many of the people who occupy these sumptuous homes want the unhoused people living a few blocks down in shelters at Mass and Cass to get out. The South End-Roxbury Community Partnership has held a series of weekly protests with mixed messages. Placards proclaimed, “Mass Cass is a Public Health Crisis” and “Recovery is Possible”—but also, “Make the Community Comfortable for All!!!,” “No More Poop on our Stoop. Enough!” and “No More Needles.”

The group wants the Long Island Bridge rebuilt so drug treatment and shelter services can be restored out there. It’s classic NIMBY-ism. But not to be outdone, the mayor of Quincy is opposed to services being reopened on his turf.

The South End-Roxbury Partnership’s acknowledgment of a public health crisis is performative, earning them positive PR while putting pressure on city officials and the police to crack down. The endgame for such NIMBY groups is to oppose the creation of new services and close or relocate existing shelters and drug treatment programs, especially methadone clinics.

“If you’re homeless and you’re creating any kind of discomfort for other people just by existing,” said Dr. Joe Wright, director of addiction treatment at Boston Health Care for the Homeless, “the likelihood is that you will be pushed in one way or another down to the zone where the city has decided that they’re gonna push folks.”

That zone is “Methadone Mile.” The problem is the lack of permanent, affordable housing and everyone knows this. “You can go to drug treatment and do better,” Larkin said,  “but if you are still living in a shelter, the quality of your life is hard.”

And imagine how hard it must be for people with a substance use disorder to stay in a shelter in an area where cheap drugs are on sale 24/7.

“The wait list for housing is long,” she added. “We are working closely with housing agencies to promote harm reduction and drug-user health to ensure that the people we work with have access to housing.”

Mass and Cass is an infuriating example of how the preventable is not prevented.

So hurry up and build public housing, Boston! And if the neighbors don’t like hundreds of people lining up to get a dose of methadone six days a week, close the clinics and create a pharmacy-based pick-up system that doesn’t silo and stigmatize methadone patients. If the gentrifiers don’t like to see people injecting drugs or syringes on the ground, demand safe consumption sites that offer people dignity and prevent them from dying. If owners of luxury brownstones don’t want shit on their stairs, install free public restrooms like the Portland Loo, a stand-alone, secure bathroom.

Mass and Cass is a community united by trauma, tragedy, tenderness and toughness. It is where homelessness, chronic mental health problems and the overdose crisis combine in degrading and deadly ways. It is an infuriating example of how the preventable is not prevented.

Frosty was waiting for me at the comfort station. We stood across from a bright blue sign that listed Community Agreements:

*Please use the restroom for its intended purpose.

*Use language that is considerate of others. This space should be safe for everyone.

*Please keep weapons or objects that could harm others out of the space.

*Do not share medications.

*Selling or purchasing items (clothes, cigarettes food, etc.) is not allowed in the space.

She wasn’t sure that anyone actually read the agreements. At least two were not being honored. I saw people sharing prescription medications and selling soda, socks and cigarettes. It shouldn’t be surprising; participation in the illicit economy is central to the survival of people who are locked out of the licit economy.

“Washing your hands isn’t going to work when you are sitting outside on the ground.”

Frosty and I walked over to the fenced area where dozens of people were in various stages of injecting, and had a discussion about dignity and drug use.

According to Frosty, dignified drug use was “not only privacy, it’s a safe, clean environment to use in. They give us clean supplies but they don’t give us a clean environment to use them in. Washing your hands isn’t going to work when you are sitting outside on the ground in the dirt, mud or the rain. You might be around vomit, shit, piss, blood. We need a place indoors with medical personnel that is sanitized. That would be a helluva lot better than what we have now.”

In the background a man was in a rage, pacing, shouting and swearing. It appeared that he had lost something. Frosty and I moved away but he kept moving toward us.

Then I realized it was Steve. I went over to talk to him. There was panic in his eyes. He said in a low voice, “I remember you. How come you walked away from me yesterday?” I started to explain, but Steve walked off, continuing to pace and escalate.

It was 4:30 and the outside areas of the comfort station were closing for the day. Staff asked everyone to move to the exit. People scrambled to gather their bags, bedding and bikes. Police sirens started to wail.

Frosty said this was how it always ended; people were driven like cattle out of the area by the police.

A crowd was now out on Atkinson street. I saw a man rolling around on the sidewalk and then I heard Steve’s voice. He was standing in the street wrapped in a blanket, still raging.

A police car moved near the crowd with lights flashing and a voice over the PA system warned everyone to leave. People began to scatter in different directions. Frosty and I said our goodbyes. I watched as she drifted away down the street, her hair blowing in the cold autumn wind, and I couldn’t help thinking about that tagline: Live as you wish.

*Names have been changed to protect sources’ privacy.

Correction: This article was originally published on February 9, but temporarily removed the next day in response to community members’ concerns. A process including an independent reviewer then took place before republication on February 18. A paragraph in the original article, now removed and retracted, implied criticism—based on inaccurate information—of Boston Users Union (BADUU), which in fact no longer operates, and other local activism. Filter apologizes for the offense and hurt this misrepresentation caused. We are committed to acknowledging and correcting factual inaccuracies and unfair representations. We are working to improve our processes and policies in this area.

All photographs by Helen Redmond.

The post Boston’s “Methadone Mile” and the Wars on Drug Users, Unhoused People appeared first on Filter.

Given the dangerous adulteration of the drug supply, exacerbated by the pandemic, there’s a good chance that one or two lives were saved that day. All the same, wider circumstances and the structural oppression of drug users saw June reach an even higher death count in the province, as Guy Felicella of the British Columbia Centre on Substance Use (BCCSU) recently described for Filter.

According to a press release posted on the Drug User Liberation Front (DULF) Facebook page, “These drugs have been tested via FTIR [Fourier-Transform Infrared Spectroscopy] spectrometry and immunoassay and are free of fentanyl, fentanyl analogues, benzodiazepines and many other harmful adulterants.”

“As far as I know, police didn’t even speak to the organizers, and people received their drugs without being hassled.”

The newly formed group raised the critical point of the lack of safe supply available for most people who use heroin or cocaine throughout Canada. There are some initiatives to expand access to diacetylmorphine (“pharmaceutical heroin”), but these are unlikely to be sustainable on a large scale until it is produced domestically, rather than imported. 

Fair Price Pharma—led by Dr. Perry Kendall, British Columbia’s first medical health officer, and Dr. Martin Schecter, a lead investigator on the North American Opioid Medicine Initiative—is one company proposing to produce injectable diacetylmorphine domestically. But people are dying while that process continues.

Gus Fowler was one of those who received a small quantity of safe supply from DULF’s community action. “I’m not sure how much cocaine and opium they handed out,” he told Filter. “But I received 0.1 gram of cocaine that was cut with about 20 percent phenacetin. As far as I know, police didn’t even speak to the organizers, and people received their drugs without being hassled.”

Cocaine supplied at the event. Photograph by Gus Fowler.

Phenacetin, a common cutting agent, can cause long-term health risks. But it’s no fentanyl. The group was transparent about the contents of all drugs distributed, handing out cards stating what they were tested for.

Fowler, who was a supporter and consumer, but not an organizer of the event, is a FTIR Technician at Get Your Drugs Tested, a website that offers both in-person and mail-in drug checking—the kind of service that people who sell drugs, as well as those who use them, should be utilizing, especially in these times.

“The call for safe supply has existed for decades, and there has been limited implementation” he said. “The implementation relies on drug users to go to a physician, tell them about their problematic drug use, and get a prescription for one of only a few substances.”

The drugs available in this way in Canada include hydromorphone—suited to some people who use heroin, but not to those of us who use fentanyl, for example, or cocaine.

Fowler added some context for the DULF event, saying, “This method of civil disobedience was an important step in legalizing cannabis showing to the public that legal drug use is not a threat to the public.” He was referencing the compassion or buyers clubs that changed the way people look at cannabis consumption (some already exist, too, for heroin).

Canada has now federally legalized cannabis—although that hasn’t come without cost to communities that formerly made their livelihood off providing the same services and products.

“Safer supply can be implemented through multiple pathways including buyers clubs.”

While conducted only on a small scale, DULF’s action pointed the way to a better world—one where safe supply isn’t in the hands of the government, but of communities. The reallocation of police funds would be one good way to set up experts on the ground to create various forms of buyers club—and when I say experts, I prioritize people who use drugs and have been doing this work since long before COVID-19 or the arrival of fentanyl.

Guy Felicella was one of many co-authors on BCCSU’s March report, Risk Mitigation: In the Context of Dual Public Health Emergencies, about the intersection of COVID-19 and the overdose crisis. He has been instrumental in pushing for progressive, sensible safe-supply solutions, while advocating for taking control out of the hands of healthcare providers. He was in attendance at DULF’s rally.

“The Drug User Liberation Front showed that safer supply can be implemented through multiple pathways including buyers clubs,” he told Filter. “Drug users were handing out free cocaine and opium. There was a lineup of over 200 people waiting patiently to receive their free drugs.”

Felicella described an atmosphere of surprise and amusement at what was happening that day, practically in front of the police—although no one was forgetting about drug-related deaths and the failed system that causes them. “People were excited and were shocked,” he said. But they were also aware of the autonomy that a model like this could offer. “It gave drug users hope that this could one day happen.”

We need to get to the point where this is an everyday occurrence.

Last year, BCCSU produced another report, Heroin Compassion Clubs, subtitled: “A cooperative model to reduce opioid overdose deaths and disrupt organized crime’s role in fentanyl, money laundering and housing unaffordability.”

As Travis Lupick described for Filter, the report detailed different models of compassion clubs, including member-driven purchasing cooperatives, along with potential benefits. Backed by the evidence presented in that report, we need more people to be starting these clubs, with or without official sanction.

Knowing some of the organizers of the Drug User Liberation Front, I feel sure they will find a way to continue to provide a safer alternative of tested drugs, regardless of the government’s position or the threat of arrest.

Over 200 people who use drugs received a safer, tested substance that day in June. This in itself reduces harm. But we need to get to the point where this is an everyday occurrence.

Top photograph of people in attendance at the DULF event by Guy Felicella.

The post Why the Drug User Liberation Front Gave Out Free, Checked Drugs in Vancouver appeared first on Filter.