Recovery advocates wonder if safe injection sites concept could soon become reality

PORTLAND, Ore. — It began with a question from the audience during Monday night’s KATU-PSU town hall on curbing Oregon’s opioid crisis.

“They treat it as a health crisis, not a criminal act. So, are there any plans to do anything like that here in Portland?”

The audience member was referring to a somewhat radical solution to the opioid crisis that’s being utilized around the world, but not yet in the United States: Safe consumption sites -- also known as safe injection sites.

"People are dying. Are we willing to do whatever it takes to save lives? Because, if so, we have solutions," said Morgan Godvin, who was a panelist during Monday night's town hall. “There have been no fatal overdoses at a safe consumption space. None. Those save lives."

Godvin was addicted to heroin for five years and was incarcerated on charges of “conspiracy to distribute heroin” when one of her best friends died from an overdose. She’s now a student at the OHSU-PSU School of Public Health.

KOMO -- KATU’s sister station in Seattle -- reported on a place in Vancouver, British Columbia, where drug users can safely use drugs in the presence of medical nurses and doctors. Supporters feel it’s better to keep drug users alive -- in a safe environment with clean needles and resources -- until they are ready to quit. That’s when nurses can get addicts to treatment.

“I think we spend a really long time making people afraid of people living with substance use disorders," Haven Wheelock told KATU News in June. Wheelock is a syringe exchange coordinator for Outside In and its Injection Drug Users Health Services program. “We’ve been fighting a war on drug use and drug users for decades. It’s only recently we’ve started to shift our thinking that substance use disorder is a disease that is treatable.”

Part of that treatment is through what's known as 'Harm Reduction' or intervening with help and designing policies to safely serve drug users.

Dr. Amanda Risser, a panelist at Monday's town hall and the Senior Medical Director of Substance Use Disorder Services with Central City Concern, said that unsafe practices can have damaging effects on intravenous drug users and addicts.

"Not so much by the drugs themselves, which has an effect for sure, but by the conditions in which they're forced to use the drugs. [This includes] epidural abscesses that make people quadriplegic and terrible infections that ravage folk's hearts. These are young people, for the most part, whose entire lives ahead of them are affected."

But not everybody is onboard with the idea of safe consumption sites, including lawmakers.

During an interview separate from the town hall, a former Washington state senator echoed what opponents worry about -- that the sites enable drug use and pave the way for crime.

“Treatment helps people. Heroin injection site leads to more deaths and people dying in the streets. We’ll start attracting heroin addicts and users from all across the nation to our streets,” Mark Miloscia said in an interview. He represented constituents in Federal Way, Washington. “If you think it’s bad now, wait months after they start a heroin injection site in Seattle.”

There are roughly 200 safe consumption sites operating legally around the world; however, none are legally operating in the United States.

During Monday's town hall, Wheelock explained how this worldwide concept could become an American reality.

“A federal court judge ruled that safe consumption sites do not fall under the [Crack House Statute Laws] which was something that has presented a huge barrier in policymakers actually being brave enough to kind of move this stuff forward,” she said.

The ruling: safe consumption sites such as the one in Vancouver, British Columbia, reduce drug use, they don’t facilitate it.

In February, the Justice Department sued the nonprofit Safehouse, an organization in Philadelphia which is hoping to open what could be the nation's first safe consumption site. The Justice Department argued that Safehouse would be in violation of part of the Controlled Substances Act, passed in the 1980s, that makes it illegal to operate facilities for the purpose of drug use or distribution.

Seattle's plans are now getting renewed attention, KOMO News reports. City leaders, including the mayor, have talked a lot about opening a supervised mobile drug injection site. Some leaders say they’ve been waiting for the outcome of this Philadelphia case before moving forward. Earlier this month, a mayor’s spokesperson said the city of Seattle still has $1.4 million set aside to open a place where people could inject drugs under medical supervision.

Watch the town hall: