PLAN HAS HUB ON PINS AND NEEDLES
‘Safe’ injection sites rejected for Methadone Mile
Some along the city’s Methadone Mile say the opioid crisis has left them feeling under siege.
“We cannot handle one more service down here, we just can’t,” said Susan Sullivan, executive director of the 250-member Newmarket Business Association.
She was one of the dozens who packed a City Council hearing yesterday to debate supervised injection sites. The idea is to allow drug users to inject opioids at a facility where doctors could monitor their use and revive them in case of an overdose.
Several other countries, including Canada, have such sites, but they are illegal under federal and state law in the U.S.
Advocates have been pushing for the creation of safe sites, with the Massachusetts Medical Association calling on the state to open a pilot facility.
State Sen. William Brownsberger (D-Belmont) is also filing legislation that would legalize such sites.
That has councilors and business owners concerned that the Methadone Mile — the South End area that hosts numerous treatment clinics and shelters — would be a likely location for any supervised injection facility.
“I have a hard time thinking it would be helpful there,” said Dorchester Councilor Frank Baker, whose district includes the Mile, adding he was concerned it would just encourage more drug use. “They call it Recovery Road, it doesn’t look like anyone is recovering.”
Doctors for Boston Health Care for the Homeless Program on Albany Street — which already runs a room where opioid addicts can come in and get treatment while high — urged further study of safe sites, saying overdoses are the leading cause of death for their clients because of increasingly potent synthetic opioids like fentanyl.
City resident Aubri Esters — who told councilors she uses drugs and overdosed just last week — said the Methadone Mile area was already a magnet for people shooting up and that a safe site would not change that.
“It already is an injection facility, it’s just not supervised ... people are already injecting all over the place, we all know that,” Esters said. “I really don’t understand what the objection is, they’re dying, literally every day. I’m confused on why there would be any limit on keeping people alive.”
But councilors and South End groups said safe injection sites would not address the larger addiction epidemic.
“Getting clean and sober should be the endgame, not providing safe houses and normalizing this activity,” said At-Large Councilor Michael Flaherty, who slammed the concept of safe injection sites.
Mayor Martin J. Walsh has also come out against the idea.
It also comes as a drug used as an elephant sedative — carfentanil, a derivative of fentanyl — has shown up in the Bay State.
The council did not take any vote on the idea of a safe injection site.