Somerville mayor shouldn’t wade into federal face-off

Somerville Mayor Joe Curtatone is planning to open a safe injection site in the city as soon as next year. By doing so he is inviting action on behalf of the federal government as such operations are illegal.

Curtatone, true to form, is undeterred.

“I’ve established a working group to examine what it would take to open a supervised consumption site in Somerville,” Curtatone said in a statement. “We know there are legal issues. We know there are logistical issues. And we want to seek community input. Data shows that supervised consumption sites can save lives and that’s our goal here.”

“The opioid epidemic is a public health crisis that kills more than 100 people across the country each day and ignoring a harm reduction strategy simply because it may be difficult to implement only maintains that status quo,” Curtatone’s statement said.

In theory, safe injection sites would result in users shooting up in front of medical staff and thus providing a safeguard against fatal overdoses. Additionally, clean needles could be distributed which would work toward preventing the spread of communicable diseases.

However, many believe that safe injection sites encourage drug use by providing users with a safe haven to shoot drugs like heroin, without concern for the laws outside of the sites. The lack of a legal consequence in such an accommodation would be the equivalent of tacitly approving it.

There is a strong case against a safe injection site to be made based purely on its unproven efficacy but there is a stronger case to be made based on the fact that the facility would be illegal and the U.S. Attorney’s Office has sent a clear message that such an operation will not be tolerated.

U.S. Attorney Andrew Lelling warned that if Somerville opens a safe injection site, “federal enforcement will follow.”

Lelling has been consistent on the matter, stating last summer that,“‘Supervised injection facilities’ would violate federal laws prohibiting the use of illicit drugs and the operation of sites where illicit drugs are used and distributed. Employees and users of such a site would be exposed to federal criminal charges regardless of any state law or study.”

“I cannot envision any scenario in which sites that normalize intravenous use of heroin and fentanyl would be off limits to federal law enforcement efforts,” he continued.

That was all Gov. Charlie Baker needed to hear. “The U.S. attorney has made it absolutely crystal clear that he will prosecute anyone who tries to open up a safe injection site in Massachusetts,” Baker said. “Chasing something that’s not legal under federal law just doesn’t make a lot of sense.”

Elected officials in Somerville intend to forge ahead anyway. “If the federal government wants to come after us, they can come after us,” Somerville City Councilor Mark Niedergang shot back at Lelling.

Somerville Mayor Curtatone should stand down. The ball is in the hands of legislators on Capitol Hill and Beacon Hill. If they want to move on safe injection sites they can do that.

In the meantime elected officials should stop flouting the law. Progress is being made in this opioid crisis. Treatment and prevention are the tip of the spear in this fight. That is where our efforts must be concentrated.