NORTHAMPTON — For Sarah Ahearn, the movement to legalize overdose prevention centers in Massachusetts is a deeply personal one.

“Do I believe that my brother and my niece would be alive today if we had these centers? Absolutely,” Ahearn, a licensed EMT, said in an interview. “I’m tired of burying people.”

Ahearn was one of several local activists and city officials who convened outside St. John’s Episcopal Church on the Smith College campus on Friday to discuss strategies on how to pressure the State House to pass a bill legalizing overdose prevention centers in Massachusetts. The Legislature passed a bill last year to address substance use disorders, but only after removing the legalization of overdose prevention centers, also known as OPCs or safe injection sites, facilities where users could safely consume drugs under supervision of health care workers.

“What does OPC look like? It looks like a medical center,” Ahearn said. “The concept of harm reduction is meeting them where they’re at.”

Jess Tilley, who leads a local advocacy group known as Harm Reduction Hedgehogs 413, said that part of the issue is people’s preconceived notions of what a drug user looks like.

“A great deal of people you see are college students who are actively using and have nowhere to turn to, and they’re at high risk,” Tilley said. “We have had to reverse multiple overdoses within the dorms that are all in this area, and folks can’t talk about it because they’ll lose their housing or their scholarship.”

Also present at St. John’s on Friday was Jim Stewart, a founding member of the group Safe Injections for Massachusetts. Stewart concurred that lawmakers’ perception of drug addiction and recovery was an obstacle to passing meaningful legislation.

“Everybody seems to think in the public sphere that first, [a user’s] got to bottom out, they’ve got to crash and have no other options,” Stewart said. “For too many people, when that happens, they’re behind a dumpster or in the basement of their friend’s house. They bottom out, but they’re dead.”

Safe injection sites won approval in the Massachusetts Senate last year, but the move was blocked in the House under Speaker Ron Mariano. Stewart said it was up to advocates, both in Boston and in the western part of the state, to convince representatives of the need for change. Northampton’s state Rep. Lindsay Sabadosa has voiced support for legalization in the past.

“He [Mariano] doesn’t understand the idea, and unfortunately a lot of people don’t see people who use drugs as somehow having lives that matter,” Stewart said. “You’ve got to help people deal with these things if you want to reduce the attractiveness of the substance they’re using.”

Safe injection sites in the U.S. are legal only in Rhode Island and New York City. Other countries, such as Canada and Germany, have also legalized the practice. In Northampton, several prominent officials have publicly voiced support for legalization, including Northwestern District Attorney Dave Sullivan, Mayor Gina-Louise Sciarra and Department of Health and Human Services Commissioner Merridith O’Leary, who was present among the advocates on Friday.

“The people need to hear that this is true public health,” O’Leary said in an interview. “We’re very fortunate here that our City Council has a resolution that supports this work, our mayor has said it out loud and our chief of police supports this.”

O’Leary also hinted that should OPCs be legalized in the state, Northampton could be one of the first places to open one.

“Northampton has been a leader in harm reduction for so long, going back to Tapestry with family planning,” O’Leary said. “We are leaders, we’re progressive, we’re innovative. If it’s going to happen anywhere, in Hampshire County specifically, Northampton would be the place for it.”

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