NORTHAMPTON — Uniting under the theme of “Together We Can,” city officials and local advocates marked International Overdose Awareness Day on Thursday in front of Forbes Library with a candlelight vigil while urging to continue to assist those struggling with opioid addiction.

With over 20,000 deaths from opioid overdoses in Massachusetts since 2012, with more than 2,000 dying each year since 2016, the issue continues to plague communities statewide, including in Northampton and Hampshire County.

Lawmakers and the state’s Department of Public Health have been pushing for municipalities to adopt the practice of safe injection sites, a non-punitive approach that advocates say would allow safe use of drugs while avoiding judgment and preventing deaths.

“What we really need to do is destigmatize drug use,” said Rachel Katz, a nurse practitioner director for addiction services at Clinical & Support Options, during Thursday’s vigil.

She compared the safe-injection sites to bars, where people can go to safely consume alcohol. “When we think about how drugs themselves are criminalized, we can then think about how that continues to flow downstream into our communities and our people and our friends who are already facing huge mountains that they have to climb up and over.”

Such centers are illegal under federal law, though two are operating in New York City, and some states have moved to legalize them. According to the advocacy group Drug Policy Alliance, there are more than 200 such sites operating in more than a dozen countries, including Germany and Canada.

Proposed state legislation that would enable municipalities to open safe injection sites ultimately failed to become law at the end of last session after the Senate and House were unable to reach a compromise.

Northampton state Rep. Lindsay Sabadosa told those gathered Thursday that although that bill has yet to be signed by the governor, there had been progress in terms of addiction treatment, such as a maternal health bill passed that no longer requires hospitals to inform the Department of Children and Families if expecting mothers test for opioids in their system.

“We know that sometimes you get tested positive because you’re in recovery, because you’re taking what you’re supposed to you’re doing everything right, but the law previously had said, you still have to call DCF,” Sabadosa said. “We changed that law to give hospitals discretion, because we don’t want to punish people who are trying to recover, who are doing the things that will protect them and their families.”

Merridith O’Leary, the city’s health commissioner, also spoke at the event, noting that she had been personally affected by the crisis, having lost a loved one due to overdose. She said tackling the crisis was a top priority for the city’s Department of Health and Human Services.

“It is this personal experience that drives my commitment to this cause,” O’Leary said. “It fuels my determination to ensure that no other family has to endure what so many of us have already had to. It reminds me every day of the urgency of this work, of the lives that hang in the balance, and of the real people behind the statistics I see every single day.”

O’Leary also called for the legalization of the safe injection sites, noting that the city of Northampton’s mayor, city council, Board of Health and police department, as well as the Northwestern district attorney had also publicly come out in favor of the sites. Several officials from the aforementioned agencies were all in attendance on Thursday.

Thursday’s vigil at Forbes featured representatives from numerous local organizations that focused on addiction treatment and recovery, including Tapestry, the Northampton Recovery Center and Drug Addiction Recovery Teams (DART). The event was led by Taylor McAndrew, the recently-appointed prevention team director for the Northampton DHHS.

“Tonight is about providing a shared space to remember community members, our friends, family and loved ones who have lost their lives to overdose,” McAndrew said in an interview. “We definitely want to raise awareness to combat any stigma folks might feel, and then also to have our community partners here providing resources related to harm reduction, treatment and recovery pathways.”

Cara Moser, a harm reduction program manager at Tapestry, became overcome with emotion after sharing the story on how she lost her daughter, Eliza, to an accidental overdose in 2018, and how the first person to find her body on the living room couch was her younger brother Jackson.

“I always break out in tears, no matter how hard I try, no matter how many years I’ve been doing this,” Moser said. “I will never have my precious baby back, but I can raise my voice, lots of tears, and demand that this pain and suffering and death comes to an end.”

According to the DPH, there were 29 opioid-related overdose deaths in Hampshire County in 2023, down from 44 deaths in 2021 and 37 deaths in 2022. Throughout the state, opioid-related overdose deaths declined by around 10% from 2022 to 2023, with 2,125 people succumbing to addiction.

Northampton Mayor Gina-Louise Sciarra said on Thursday that despite the declining numbers, there was still much work to be done to combat the opioid epidemic.

“Any fatality is too many. This should not serve as a reason to slow down our community wide interventions and harm reduction messaging,” Sciarra said. “If anything, it should inspire all of us to work harder. There are still too many losses, especially in populations that have been historically marginalized.”

Alexander MacDougall can be reached at amacdougall@gazettenet.com.