State advances bid to create legal drug injection sites

SACRAMENTO » The California Assembly on Thursday approved a controversial bill allowing Los Angeles, Oakland and San Francisco to set up places where opioid users could legally inject drugs in supervised settings.

The move follows more than a year of legislative consideration, with proponents saying it would save lives and detractors saying it would enable drug addiction.

The Assembly’s approval sends the bill back to the state Senate for final consideration in August, after lawmakers return from a monthlong summer recess. Senators approved a slightly different version more than a year ago, with no votes to spare.

The idea is to give people who would use drugs anyway a location to inject them while trained staff are available to help if they suffer accidental overdoses.

The move comes amid a national opioid crisis and spike in overdose deaths particularly if users inadvertently ingest drugs spiked with fentanyl.

New York City in December opened the first two publicly recognized overdose prevention sites in the

United States, intervening in more than 150 overdoses, although its operation does not have federal approval to operate. Rhode Island approved testing such centers for two years.

The U.S. Justice Department under the Biden administration recently signaled it might be open to allowing the sites with “appropriate guardrails,” a turnaround from the Trump administration that won a lawsuit blocking a safe consumption site in Philadelphia.

The measure passed the Assembly on a 42-28 vote, one more vote than needed.