Will Denver be able to open safe drug- use sites?
A bill being drafted in the House would let cities decide
When Denver’s City Council cleared the way for a supervised drug- use site to open here in late 2018, it left one roadblock in place: The legislature had to give its blessing first.
More than four years later, a group of Colorado lawmakers is preparing a bill that would clear that obstacle.
The proposal, which is being drafted in the House, would let local governments decide whether to allow such sites to open in their jurisdiction, said Rep. Elisabeth Epps, a Denver Democrat and the bill’s primary sponsor. It wouldn’t set aside any money to fund any facilities, and cities would still have to provide their own approval, which Epps said promotes local control. State drug laws also wouldn’t change; any illicit substances brought into a sanctioned site would have to be acquired elsewhere.
“What it does in authorizing overdose- prevention centers is it gives our cities, our communities, our public health officials … a really critical tool, a data- driven intervention, an evidence- based way to save lives,” Epps said. “It’s been saving lives for decades in other states, other countries, and it’s overdue. Long overdue.”
The measure has the support from, among others, Sen. Kevin Priola, a Henderson Democrat known for his work on substance use and harm reduction. Democratic House Speaker Julie McCluskie and Republican Minority Leader Mike Lynch declined to comment on the proposal Thursday because a bill has not been introduced formally.
Lynch was a sponsor of contentious legislation last year that tightened penalties on fentanyl possession, until he pulled his support shortly before that bill passed in May. Epps’ proposal promises to resurrect a broader debate that last year’s fight triggered: Decades into America’s
drug war, how should Colorado’s policymakers address a worsening overdose crisis?
Long an objective of harm reduction advocates and a growing coalition of health officials, overdose- prevention centers — also known as safe- use or safe- consumption sites — are locations for substance users to bring their already- obtained drugs and take them under supervision. They’re among the most controversial turns in America’s winding path to address substance use, with critics accusing them of facilitating illicit drug use.
A spokesman for Gov. Jared Polis echoed that concern. In a statement to the Post on Thursday, the spokesman said the governor had not seen the legislation yet but that he “would be deeply concerned with any approach that would contribute to more drug use and lawlessness.” In September, Polis’ office said he was“not open” to overdose prevention centers here.
Denver is the only city in Colorado that has approved the opening of a site, Epps said. When city officials released a menu of services that could be funded through opioid settlement dollars in September, the list included an overdose prevention center. Bob Mc- Donald, the executive director of the city’s Department of Public Health and Environment, said at the time that he didn’t anticipate anyone seeking money for that purpose, given the standing legislative barrier.
Jamie Torres, the Denver City Council president, told the Post on Thursday that overdose- prevention centers “are definitely something we should explore” and that city officials would follow the proposal’s path through the legislature.
“I think Denver already kind of dipped its toe in the water, and as I said we’re ready for the conversation when it’s time to have it,” said Torres, who was not on the council when it passed the ordinance in 2018.
Shortly after, political opposition prompted Colorado lawmakers to shelve a similar proposal four years ago. Its return to the Capitol comes as state and national officials grapple with fentanyl’s ubiquitous and often lethal presence in the broader drug supply. It has emerged as the dominant illicit opioid in recent years, part of what experts and federal investigators say is a permanent shift away from familiar street drugs toward more powerful and unpredictable synthetics.
Potent in small doses and often surreptitiously mixed with other drugs, fentanyl has increased the risk of accidental overdoses for users of all stripes and, advocates said, elevated the urgency for substantial policy interventions.
The Colorado Municipal League, which represents scores of municipalities statewide, has committed its support to the bill, and some national organizations — such as the American Medical Association — have endorsed the policy generally.
Messages sent to a coalition of law enforcement groups — representing Colorado’s police chiefs, county sheriffs and fraternal order of police — were not returned last week. A spokeswoman for the Colorado District Attorneys’ Council said in an email that the organization was withholding comment until its members could review the bill.
Although opponents have argued that the facilities will only encourage drug use, supporters counter that people with substance- use disorders will take drugs either way; the choice, they argue, is whether that use should be safe or not, in a controlled setting or in public bathrooms and parks. An early study of two approved sites in New York, which became the first in the country when they opened in late 2021, found that nearly 76% of participants said they would’ve otherwise used drugs publicly or semi- publicly.
“I think there’s a lot of sort of concern about whether this kind of facility enables people to use drugs, and I see it as enabling people to survive, as they deal with an addiction,” said Tyler Coyle, an addiction medicine physician at the University of Colorado. “So that’s sort of where my heart goes out to: these folks and trying to do what we can to keep them safe and healthy for one more day so hopefully they can turn a corner.”
Facilities offer not only a watchful eye but an access point for treatment, plus a litany of other services, from housing referrals and Medicaid enrollment to STI testing, said Lisa Raville, the executive director of Denver’s Harm Reduction Action Center. The “number one requirement” for getting a person into treatment, she said, is that they’re still alive.
Any site opened in Colorado would no longer be on the leading edge of prevention centers in the United States. New York’s sites have that distinction; in the 15 months since they opened, more than 2,300 people have made use of their services and 701 overdoses have been stopped. In 2021, the governor of Rhode Island signed a law to launch an overdose- prevention center pilot program. Other state legislatures have considered similar bills, and California lawmakers passed their own version in 2022, only to have it vetoed by Gov. Gavin Newsom.
Asked about similar opposition from Polis, Priola, one of the bill’s planned cosponsors, framed the proposal as a question about local control as much as it is about public health. If the governor is “true to his position on local control from the past, I think he’ll sign it,” Priola said, although he added that he hadn’t discussed the proposal with the governor’s office.
For Epps and Raville, allowing overdose- prevention sites to open would signal a shift away from what they described as decades of failed drug policy.
“Those legislative choices along criminal- legal lines are ones that push us away from saving lives,” Epps said. “And an overdose prevention center helps us rewrite that. It helps us correct that track.”