Officials: Safe injection sites not likely in Connecticut
After the opening of the nation’s first supervised injection sites for drug users in New York City last month, local leaders said Connecticut is more likely to take a wait-and-see approach before seriously considering the strategy as a way to reduce overdose deaths.
The New York facilities, which received the greenlight Nov. 30 to begin overseeing illegal drug injections as part of Mayor Bill de Blasio’s harm-reduction platform, follow years of unsuccessful efforts to open sites in cities from Philadelphia to San Francisco and Portland.
Those proposals have often stalled in the face of local backlash from neighbors and calcified opposition from law enforcement and federal officials, who say safe injection sites violate a federal law known as the “crack house statute,” which makes it illegal to operate a premises for the use or distribution of illegal drugs.
That opposition makes it unlikely that Connecticut will become one the first states to experiment with the policy outside of New York, advocates say.
“It won’t happen using that language,” said Mark Jenkins, founder of the Greater Hartford Harm Reduction Coalition and a supporter of safe injection programs. “People have already formed their opinions about safe injection facilities, we’re not even having conversations.”
Jenkins said other names — such as overdose prevention sites — have more positive connotations, and allow advocates and policymakers
to point to the stated benefits of the facilities.
“Whatever you want to call them, they’ve been around for 30 years,” said Dr. Robert Heimer, a professor of epidemiology at Yale who studies diseases and mortality related to drug use.
Heimer said supervised injection sites are relatively common in Europe, where they are seen as a commonsense method of reducing some of the ills associated with drug use, such as overdoses or dirty needles littering in public spaces.
“No one’s ever died of an opioid overdose in a safe injection space,” Heimer said.
Critics argue that safe injection sites are likely to bring crime, drug addicts and nuisance issues into surrounding neighborhoods — something advocates like Heimer said is likely already present given the prevalence of addiction.
Overdose deaths in Connecticut are on track this year to surpass the 1,378 fatal overdoses recorded in 2020, and have been steadily
rising since 2015, according to the state Department of Public Health.
Danbury Police Chief Patrick Ridenhour, who heads the state’s Police Chiefs Association, said the group has yet to hold formal discussions regarding safe injection sites, but said the opening of two locations in New York had brought the issue to the region’s attention.
“Anytime we’re talking about spaces for people to use illegal drugs, it would be concerning,” Ridenhour said.
A spokesperson for the state Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services said the agency has no plans to support the opening of a safe injection site.
Leaders of the legislative committees overseeing public health and the judiciary also said they have yet to begin serious talks regarding safe injection sites and the issue was not likely to merit much discussion during the upcoming legislative session.
“To my knowledge, it’s not something that’s come
to the Legislature’s attention the last few years,” said state Rep. Steve Stafstrom, D- Bridgeport, who co-chairs the Judiciary Committee.
State Rep. Jonathan Steinberg, D- Westport, the co-chair of the Public Health Committee, said any attempt to allow safe injection sites in Connecticut would likely prove controversial and attract heavy opposition from Republicans. While he said he believed the sites “can be effective,” he also noted that their history in the United States spans a little over two weeks.
“I don’t see it happening in Connecticut,” Steinberg said. “I think we should at least let [New York] first beta test it.”
De Blasio credited New York’s two safe injection sites with reversing nine overdoses in their first week of operation. In Rhode Island, health officials also took steps this month toward potentially opening the state’s first safe injection sites, complete with drug testing, clean
needles and staff trained in CPR and the administration of overdose-reversing drugs like Naloxone, according to the Providence Journal.
Jenkins predicted that pressure will not build on leaders in Connecticut to approve safe injection sites until they are up and running in multiple surrounding states — and shown to be effective.
“Once Massachusetts, Rhode Island and New York are doing it, Connecticut will feel obligated to do it and it won't be such a political nightmare,” Jenkins said.
Heimer, the Yale professor, noted however that Connecticut has a history in the region of pioneering harm reduction policies such as needle exchanges, which began in New Haven as early as 1990.
“We’re traditional in some ways, but also very well educated,” Heimer said. “I just hope that it doesn’t take a lot more overdoses and a lot more deaths before people understand the urgency.”