NORTHAMPTON — When it comes to setting up sites where people can use drugs safely to avoid overdoses, opinion polling seems to show a split among Massachusetts residents. A 2019 poll from WBUR showed 50% of state residents approved of opening supervised consumption sites, compared with 43% who opposed the idea.
Many of the Pioneer Valley’s elected officials on Beacon Hill are strong supporters of the idea, however. Of the elected officials representing residents in the Gazette’s coverage area of Hampshire County and Holyoke, nearly all endorsed the idea in recent interviews.
“Western Mass is ready for this,” was how state Rep. Daniel Carey, D-Easthampton, put it.
Several bills related to safe consumption sites are currently pending before the state Legislature’s Joint Committee on Mental Health, Substance Use and Recovery, including one that would create a 10-year pilot program for two such sites in the state. During hearings in front of the committee, Rep. Lindsay Sabadosa, D-Northampton, and Rep. Mindy Domb, D-Amherst, both testified in favor of the sites.
“I’ve supported them for more than a decade,” said Domb, who visited a safe consumption site in Vancouver in the early 2000s and said she was “incredibly impressed. Most people will relapse again and again on their way to recovery, she said, and so in the in between should work to support keeping them alive and healthy. “The research shows that these programs do not initiate or promote drug use, they don’t increase crime … It helps people engage with treatment and the bonus is they help prevent unintentional opioid overdoses.”
Of course, many drugs are still illegal under federal law and under the Trump administration, the Department of Justice sued a nonprofit in Philadelphia that was trying to open a safe consumption site, sometimes called supervised injection sites or overdose prevention centers. Under President Joe Biden, though, the Justice Department has suggested that its “evaluating” the facilities and talking about “appropriate guardrails” with regulators.
Sabadosa, who is “extremely supportive” of safe consumption sites, said that instead of debating whether a site is going to be allowed or not, municipalities that want to host a safe consumption site should move forward with it. She cited the steps Somerville officials have taken, moving closer than any other community in the state to opening a site.
“I think if cities and towns want to do it and the federal government isn’t going to raid these places … they should do that, they should lead,” Sabadosa said. And she said many leaders in her district are supportive of the idea. “I think that our community is primed to do this, it’s just going to be a question of boldness and political will.”
“Like so many other things, western Massachusetts is leading the commonwealth,” said state Rep. Natalie Blais, D-Sunderland, who supports such sites.
There are still plenty of people who balk at the idea of safe consumption sites, though. In 2019, the then U.S. attorney for Massachusetts — Andrew Lelling, a Trump appointee — wrote an op-ed in The Boston Globe declaring that the sites “aren’t safe or legal.” He questioned the research behind the sites’ efficacy, claiming that they lead to more crime and amount to “giving up” and declaring defeat in the battle to reduce opioid use.
“This is a philosophical contest about how Americans should confront a social crisis,” Lelling wrote. “Injection sites normalize intravenous drug abuse, encourage a horrible addiction, and let down the people who suffer from it. Promoters of these sites offer addicts little but failure — medical safety at the time of injection but, overall, mere complicity in a nightmarish cycle of addiction leading to death.”
Hampden District Attorney Anthony Gulluni is another opponent of safe consumption sites, according to James Leydon, the communication’s director for Gulluni’s office.
“He is not in favor of injection sites,” Leydon said in an email Friday.
Others in law enforcement in the region feel differently, however. “After I visited a safe consumption site in Toronto it really confirmed how it saves lives and helps people get treatment in the long run,” Northwestern District Attorney David Sullivan said. “Unless we keep them from overdosing, they’re not going to be there for treatment down the road.”
Sullivan stressed that one of the biggest factors contributing to overdose deaths is people using opioids alone. He rejected arguments that the sites lead to more crime or drug use.
“I think law enforcement understands that doesn’t happen,” he said. “Study after study has shown it doesn’t increase crime … It’s just like a medical facility.”
But those are concerns that some lawmakers say they’ve heard. State Sen. John Velis, D-Westfield, who is a vice chair of the Joint Committee on Mental Health, Substance Use and Recovery and himself in recovery from alcohol addiction, described safe consumption sites as “one of the most polarizing topics out there.”
Velis spoke highly of the research behind the sites and the harm-reduction approach to public health, saying what he hears from people in that field is that such sites are an “astronomical” success when it comes to saving lives. But said he wants to go on a “fact-finding mission” to a site before coming to a definitive conclusion.
“It’s not lost on me what a lot of other people say – that it’s rewarding bad behavior, why are we doing this, it’s a nuisance to neighborhoods,” Velis said. “I’m going to ask the neighbors in these areas, ‘Tell me what impact this has had on your neighborhood.”
Earlier this year at an event at Tapestry Health, state Rep. Pat Duffy, D-Holyoke, told the Gazette that she supports the legislation now in committee on Beacon Hill as part of the harm-reduction strategy of “meeting people where they are.” In a statement, state Sen. Eric Lesser, D-Longmeadow, said he has also supported legislative efforts for safe consumption site pilot programs, saying it’s “important for us to employ tools that will reduce overdoses and guide individuals towards treatment in a way that is safe and effective.”
“It just makes sense in the way needle exchanges make sense, in the way fentanyl test strips make sense,” said state Sen. Jo Comerford, D-Northampton. “We have to meet people where they are, we have to give them the tools they need, we have to support them along their journey and we have to help them keep themselves safe.”
State Sen. Adam Hinds, D-Pittsfield, previously worked in community-based intervention programs related to substance-use disorder. He said he saw firsthand the importance of harm reduction and “finding any way to ensure people are exposed to the option of recovery and how you work through that.” Asked why the state hasn’t yet moved to support the creation of the sites, he said that addiction is still very stigmatized.
“There’s misunderstanding of what this means as a tool for folks who are experiencing addiction,” he said.
Dusty Christensen can be reached at dchristensen@gazettenet.com.