Philadelphia could become home to the first safe-injection site in the nation, something advocates say could reduce fatal ODs and curb other harms of the opioid crisis. But a Trump-appointed U.S. attorney stands in the way
l, safe injection sites have been associated with lower mortality rates, as well as a decrease in OD-related ambulance calls and rates of HIV infection. Critics, however, have said there isn’t enough substantive research to determine whether these sites are actually beneficial for drug users.
Although such supervised injections have long been operating in major Canadian cities like Toronto and Vancouver, they have yet to make their way to the United States.
Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney has expressed his approval for plans to build the site, even visiting Canada in July to tour legal injection facilities there. Yet many local lawmakers have expressed their opposition to the idea, most notably McSwain, a Trump appointee whoattempting to prevent the Safehouse site from opening, on the grounds that it constituted a violation of the crack house statute.
In response to the suit, Rhonda Goldfein, a board member of Safehouse, said that the crack house statute should not apply to supervised injection sites, which do not provide drugs and instead focus on harm reduction and overdose prevention. “We have a disagreement on the analysis and intention of the law,” Goldfein told NPR at the time. “We don’t think it was intended to prevent activities such as this, and perhaps it will take a court’s ruling to move the issue forward.
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