Legislator again seeking to allow safe drug sites
State Sen. Scott Wiener said Thursday he plans to reintroduce controversial legislation next year that would allow for safe druguse sites in San Francisco and Oakland.
Wiener’s efforts to pass similar legislation have faced challenges over the past few years. The sites are aimed at reducing opioid overdoses and encouraging users to go into treatment while allowing them to get high under supervision.
“We have a huge problem here in San Francisco and elsewhere with substanceuse disorder and with people who are overdosing and all too often dying,” said Wiener, DSan Francisco. “This is a public health crisis.”
The push to open the sites comes as San Francisco experienced a 70% increase in overdose deaths last year, and 2020 is expected to be even worse.
“We are in an emergency in San Francisco,”
said Dr. Grant Colfax, the city’s public health director. “We need every tool at our disposal.”
According to a Department of Public Health report released in August, 441 people died of an overdose in 2019 — a massive jump from the 259 overdoses recorded in 2018. More than half the deaths in 2019 were related to the super powerful opioid fentanyl.
“When you have people that you know and you love who struggle with addiction, the thing you want most for them is ... ( to) make sure that addiction doesn’t take their life,” said Mayor London Breed at an event Thursday. Breed mentioned her own connection to the issue — her younger sister died of a drug overdose in 2006.
“I wish the opportunity to get help was available to her,” she added.
The event to announce the legislation was held in the heart of the Tenderloin, a neighborhood where residents and businesses have long complained about openair drug use that they say has only gotten worse during the pandemic.
The safeinjection sites would be staffed with medical personnel and social workers, who would offer help to those ready to get addiction treatment. The sites would be equipped with clean needles, testing for fentanyl and other potentially lethal drug additives. Medications that reverse overdoses, including Narcan, would also be available.
Such facilities, which operate in Canada and in some parts of Europe and Australia, are illegal under California law. Wiener said his proposed legislation would “remove the barrier” so San Francisco and Oakland can start pilot programs.
Critics say safeconsumption sites would only sanction and encourage drug use and crime. They also argue the sites don’t do enough to compel those struggling with addiction to seek treatment.
Wiener acknowledged concerns that people might have about safeinjection sites.
“The question for the public is, would you prefer that people use drugs or inject on the sidewalk by your home, by your business, or the park that you’re using, or would you rather that they do so inside in a supervised safe, clean environment?” he said.
The Archdiocese of San Francisco has spoken out against safeinjection sites since 2018 because it says such facilities are “harmful to the overall society, and particularly to young people who are finding their way in what is an often confusing society that already presents mixed messages about drug and alcohol abuse.”
Keith Humphreys, a professor in psychiatry at Stanford University, said that there isn’t much evidence to suggest that the use of injection sites could reduce a community’s overdose rate because not enough people use the facilities.
“The evidence in favor of them is a lot weaker than advocates say,” Humphreys said. “When you’re in an injection room and you inject, you’re less likely to have a bad incident because there is someone there who can save your life. At the same time, we know that most users don’t use the injection room. Most users who use the injection room don’t use it very much.”
Wiener’s most recent attempt was AB362, coauthored by Assemblywoman Susan Eggman, DStockton, which was tabled over the summer because of a reduction in bills due to COVID19.
Wiener also tried to get a similar bill that only included San Francisco through in 2018, when the Legislature approved it, but thenGov. Jerry Brown vetoed it.
He and Eggman also tried in 2019, when it cleared the Assembly, but they decided to table it until the next year to try to push it through the state Senate. Eggman and Wiener said the delay would give them time to consider adding other cities — not just San Francisco — to the legislation.
One of those cities was Oakland. That May, Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf and Councilwoman Nikki Fortunato Bas passed a resolution to request the bill be amended to include Oakland. Schaaf was supposed to be at the event Thursday, but missed it due to traffic on the Bay Bridge.
Wiener said Thursday he doesn’t know yet if Gov. Gavin Newsom will support the legislation.
San Francisco has continued to move forward with plans while awaiting state action. In February, Breed and Supervisor Matt Haney introduced legislation that would create a process for the Department of Public Health to hand out permits to nonprofits to operate the sites.
That legislation still relies on the state bill to pass.
The Trump administration has come out strongly against such sites and has made it clear that those working at them could face imprisonment.
Breed has said she will wait for Trump’s departure before opening a safeinjection site or for the results of an appeal in a case out of Philadelphia in which a federal judge ruled that city’s proposal to open a safeinjection site doesn’t violate federal law.
The results of that case would not affect San Francisco’s standing because it’s in a different federal circuit.
“We have to do a better job,” Breed said Thursday. “To understand that we can’t control people and their addiction, but what we can do is be there for them.”
Wiener said that he is open to other cities being included in the legislation. He also cautioned that the legislation alone wouldn’t fix the region’s drug crisis.
“Let’s try this proven approach,” he said. “Is it a silver bullet? Of course not, there’s no such thing.”