A panel of health and safety experts bandied about the perks and costs of safe injection sites Thursday, and seemingly ended up with more questions than answers: Would the costs lead to the necessary results? How much is saving a life worth?
About 70 people attended the presentation at the Dealer.com building in Burlington, where a seven-person panel made up of law enforcement, medical and government officials weighed the costs and benefits of such sites.
Last year, Chittenden County State’s Attorney Sarah George, one of the panel members, created a commission to study the idea of bringing a site, where heroin users could go to inject drugs under supervision, to Burlington.
But in January, the Vermont Senate Judiciary committee decided not to take up a bill that would have enabled them this year.
That’s not to say the opioid crisis has waned. A record 107 Vermonters died of opiate overdoses in 2017, one more than died in 2016, when the state also set a record, according to Department of Health data.
None of the panelists opposed the idea of the sites, but some, including Vermont Health Commissioner Mark Levine, called for a measured approach.
Levine raised questions of professional and legal liability for doctors at the sites, and encouraged a thorough cost-benefit analysis of its effectiveness in preventing overdose deaths.
Burlington Police Chief Brandon del Pozo counseled that the benefits of an injection site to the community may not be as widespread as they seem. “To go to war with the U.S. Attorney [to reduce about] 2.3 percent of the fatal risk — I think that’s a conscious decision we’d have to make in comparison to other interventions,” he said.
In response, Chittenden County State’s Attorney Sarah George asked nine audience members — an estimate of how many lives a safe injection site may save in a year — to stand up. “Is there anyone here willing to say how much one of their lives is worth?” she queried, surveying the audience. “Ten thousand dollars?”
George encouraged the community to not let the cost of the proposal drive their decision. “Frankly, if I knew the amount [it cost], I’d go out and fundraise it for it,” she said.
George noted that no one has died at the first safe injection site in North America, which opened in Vancouver, Canada, in 2003. There have been 6,440 overdose “interventions” at that site, according to a September 2017 article in Maclean’s magazine.
Two American cities, Seattle and Philadelphia, have made progress toward opening safe injection sites. A proposal is also under consideration in Ithaca, N.Y.
Panelists, as well as audience members, shared their own stories of preventing overdose deaths or watching family or friends suffer from addiction.
Grace Keller told impassioned stories of her work offering the overdose-reversing drug Narcan as program coordinator of the Howard Center’s Safe Recovery program.
“When you’re the one giving mouth to mouth, or attending a funeral or telling someone they have HIV, and research tells you there’s an option that’s evidence-based, you feel you have to consider it,” Keller, a panelist, said.
A safe injection site would likely take years to implement, and would probably require approval from the state legislature, as well as the federal government, Levine warned.
Nonetheless, he didn’t think the option should be taken off the table. “Let’s evaluate it on the merits we know we have in” the research, he added.
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This is just brilliant. Lets create facilities for criminals to go and commit crime under supervision. Does anyone else see the stupidity in this course of action? And, yes this is cold, but how much are the lives of these addicts really worth while they are using? How much value do they contribute to society? In the meantime we have people suffering from various maladies that are not criminal that cant get help due to the cost of treatment. How much sense does that make? Im all for providing addicts with treatment for their addiction but to provide a free space for them to use and continue down the road of their addiction is just stupid.
Why not provide over populated schools for disturbed persons with automatic weapons so they could take out their frustrations safely? This is the same concept as safe injection sites!
“This is just brilliant. Lets create facilities for criminals to go and commit crime under supervision.”
This is no different than what happens every day at the Heritage Foundation, the NRA, Americans for Prosperity , Congress, the Chamber of Commerce, Exxon/Mobil, Koch Industries, Goldman Sachs , Vermont Gas, Burlington City Hall, and a host of other “respectable” facilities . It’s just that these white collar types dress better, can hire lawyers and lobbyists and PR firms to put a Happy Face on their crimes. And all of these entities are enabled or given special status by the government.
Think of these addicts as the same as 2nd amendment gun freaks at a shooting range with their Tricorn hats on their tricorn heads. They are pursuing their “Rights” of “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness” as given to them by GOD.
Like the poor and disabled, addicts are just an easy target for the depravity of Economic Darwinists and “Free Market” solutions types. You just can’t have junkies hanging around on Church Street getting in the way of all this “vibrancy” and culture.
I’d rather give the state 100 extra dollars to fund a program helping addicts that want to quit than give them 1 dollar to provide a supervised place to use. Making it safer for addicts to continue using isn’t going to help the problem. Help those that want help, spend our tax dollars appropriately.
Open it and then you cant prosecute people for other drug offenses. Why can’t a fella snort some coke?
I know!!!! – Why don’t we set up designated times for drunk drivers to drive home without fear of conviction?
Damn! I’m going into politics! I ‘ve got it!
Safe Injection Sites ENCOURAGE drug use. Instead, wny not have medically supervised withdrawls for addicts who as one commenter notes, want to stop using drugs. And no soft-landings that allow other drugs to take the hurt away. The goal is two-fold: get people off drugs and put dealers in prison. Oh, and let’s bring back common sense.
Maybe they could open up a facility for the chronic wife beaters so they pound up their wife in a safe place. This way they would be supervised so they wouldn’t be able to beat the wife to death. After all, chronic wife beating is an illness isn’t it.
We really have lost all common sense and my hard earned money keeps getting flushed down the toilet by elected idiots.
Personal responsibility is all I have to say.
So the elected officials of this state want to take law abiding citizens guns away but they want to allow criminals to shoot up so they can go steal from the citizens that can no longer defend themselves. Are we all living a bad episode of the twilight zone?
Do I have it right that Burlington ballot passed in March telling Governor and legislature that no one under age 21 may purchase cigarettes? Personally, I do not endorse smoking cigarettes but it seems what Burlington is saying is 19 and 20 year olds cannot buy a pack of cigarettes but that they, and anyone else, 17 year olds, whoever, are perfectly free to shoot up with heroin in their “safe” injection site?
Has State’s Attorney Sarah George considered the possibility that while 9 lives may theoretically be saved, 200 more people may theoretically consider trying heroin because of the official “safe” endorsement from City of Burlington, leading to an actual net loss of life as 10 or 20 of those new 200 overdose and die?