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RHODE ISLAND SELECTS LOCATION FOR NATION’S FIRST STATE-APPROVED SAFE DRUG
CONSUMPTION SITE TO CURB OVERDOSE DEATHS
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POLITICS
RHODE ISLAND SELECTS LOCATION FOR NATION’S FIRST STATE-APPROVED SAFE DRUG
CONSUMPTION SITE TO CURB OVERDOSE DEATHS
Published
6 hours ago
on
February 2, 2024
By
Ben Adlin
Harm reduction advocates in Rhode Island announced this week that they’ve
secured a location for the nation’s first state-regulated overdose prevention
center where people can use illegal drugs in a safer environment under the
supervision of trained professionals. And on Thursday evening, the Providence
City Council gave formal approval to the plan.
News of the plan’s finalization was trumpeted on Wednesday by the group Project
Weber/RENEW, which is working with clinical partner VICTA to open the site
adjacent to the Rhode Island Hospital campus in Providence. Organizers are
aiming to open the facility sometime this summer and provide services on
weekdays.
Colleen Daley Ndoye, executive director of Project Weber/RENEW, a peer-led harm
reduction and recovery support organization, said in a press release that it’s
“imperative to take decisive action to save lives.”
Cannabis sales hit record high in Michigan
Cannabis sales hit record high in Michigan
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“In 2022, Rhode Island lost 434 lives to the overdose epidemic,” Daley Ndoye
said. “This overdose prevention center is a pivotal element in the state’s
comprehensive efforts to combat this crisis.”
Both organizations say they’re “committed to working closely with state, local
and community leaders before and during the center’s operation,” noting that the
Providence City Council “has provided public support of the project.”
On Thursday evening, the council officially approved plans for the facility on
what appeared in video to be a unanimous voice vote, with a number of members
speaking in favor of its role in the community.
“This is going to be located in my ward,” said Deputy Majority Leader Mary Kay
Harris (D). “I’m very proud of an agency that I know is going to make an impact
on the lives of people and change the lives of people who have been suffering in
each and every one of our neighborhoods.”
Senior Deputy Majority Leader John Gonclaves (D) said that “Providence is
leading the way. The state is also leading the way on harm reduction.”
“When we think about overdose prevention, when we think about substance use
disorders and we when we think about the challenges associated with it,
specifically here in the city of Providence, this is really a game changer,”
Gonclaves said.
Majority Whip Miguel A. Sanchez (D) said the approach is based on “data driven
policy that is working in other countries, in New York City,” adding: “It does
save lives.”
“Drug use in public places makes folks uncomfortable, right?” City Councilman
Justin M. Roias (D) said simply. “And so if that’s the case, then we should find
an alternative. And that alternative is: Designate safe-use sites.”
The center is being opened under legislation enacted by Rhode Island lawmakers
in 2021. That law, which was signed by Gov. Dan Mckee (D), authorized a pilot
program for the sites that’s currently set to expire in March 2026. Project
Weber/RENEW said that window should provide “the necessary time for the facility
to be opened, operationalized, and evaluated.” It’s funded with state money from
an opioid lawsuit settlement.
Staff at the site, according to Project Weber/RENEW, will include “will include
experts with lived experience with substance use and recovery, including peer
recovery specialists, counselors, and prescribers who can initiate medication
for substance use disorder(s).”
Those with lived experience include the center’s two co-directors, Project
Weber/RENEW Deputy Director Ashley Perry and Overdose Prevention Program
Director Dennis Baller.
The organization already provides a suite of support services drop-in centers in
Providence and Pawtucket, including access to naloxone and other safer use
supplies; basic needs like food, water and hygiene products; HIV and hepatitis C
testing; and connections with an array of other services such as recovery
coaching and housing support.
In addition to supervised consumption, the new space will also offer laundry
services and showers, the group said.
VICTA, meanwhile—an outpatient treatment program focusing on mental health and
substance use disorder—will staff the center with “medical providers, nurses,
and counselors on site to provide immediate access to services when an
individual is ready for treatment,” the release says. “By offering ‘treatment on
demand,’ people using the overdose prevention center can act on their key moment
of readiness to initiate change.”
“We know that motivation can be fleeting, and that recovery is not linear,” said
Lisa Peterson, VICTA’s chief operating officer. “We are committed to helping
people stay as healthy as possible through every stage in their process.”
State officials at the Department of Health will oversee and regulate the
center, and researchers from the People, Place and Health Collective at Brown
University’s School of Public Health will seek to measure both individual and
community outcomes.
Research, Project Weber/RENEW said, suggests people who visit overdose
prevention centers are 30 percent more likely to access substance use treatment.
Moreover, “Data has shown that no one has ever died at an overdose prevention
center worldwide throughout the many decades of their existence.”
The group pointed to data from two overdose prevention centers operating under
municipal authorization in New York City, noting that the sites “successfully
reversed more than 1,300 overdoses in their two years of operation, with only a
handful requiring emergency medical services.”
Late last year, in a little-noticed section of a report on the nation’s
worsening drug overdose epidemic, the American Medical Association (AMA) urged
states and local communities to consider allowing overdose prevention sites
(OSPs) to operate as a public health strategy.
“At this point in the nation’s epidemic, the AMA urges states and communities to
consider all evidence-based approaches to prevent overdose death and help
connect individuals to health care and treatment,” it said. “The data shows that
OSPs help reduce risky drug use behaviors, overdose and death while improving
public safety and access to health care.”
Meanwhile the Biden administration has continued fight against efforts to open
the sites. The Justice Department has stood in the way of a proposed
Philadelphia overdose prevention site, for example, even as some in the two in
New York City began operation with approval from local officials. The opposition
has chilled some other jurisdictions from allowing similar centers to open.
But studies show the sites “save lives,” AMA said in its report, which found
that nearly 3 in 4 people who used the centers did so instead of taking drugs in
a public or semipublic location.
“Whether in Canada, Europe or the sites in New York City, thousands of overdose
reversals have taken place while there have been no reported fatalities at the
sites,” AMA said.
In November, a separate AMA-published study found that the New York centers have
not led to increased crime, despite a significant decrease in arrests. While
opponents had argued that establishing the harm reduction centers would drive
crime, that study, in JAMA Public Health, found that “initial data from NYC do
not support these concerns.”
A different 2022 JAMA study found additionally that, over the course of two
months in the first year of implementation, trained staff at New York City’s
first overdose prevention center intervened in 125 instances to mitigate
overdose risk, administering naloxone and oxygen and providing other services to
prevent a person’s death.
Even so, a federal prosecutor who has jurisdiction over Manhattan emphasized in
a statement to The New York Times in August that the sites are illegal and that
he is “prepared to exercise all options—including enforcement—if this situation
does not change in short order.”
In 2021, the Supreme Court rejected a request to hear a case on the legality of
establishing the facilities. The following year, the Justice Department said it
was in the process of evaluating possible “guardrails” for safe consumption
sites.
Congressional researchers in 2022 highlighted the “uncertainty” of the federal
government’s position on safe drug consumption sites, while pointing out that
lawmakers could temporarily resolve the issue by advancing an amendment modeled
after the one that has allowed medical marijuana laws to be implemented without
Justice Department interference.
Meanwhile, National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) Director Nora Volkow
has tacitly endorsed the idea of authorizing safe consumption sites, arguing
that evidence has effectively demonstrated that the facilities can prevent
overdose deaths.
Volkow declined to say specifically what she believes should happen with the
ongoing lawsuit, but she said safe consumption sites that have been the subject
of research “have shown that it has saved a significant [percentage of] patients
from overdosing.”
Rahul Gupta, the White House drug czar, has said the Biden administration
is reviewing broader drug policy harm reduction proposals, including the
authorization of supervised consumption sites.
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) put out a pair of requests for
applications in December 2021 to investigate how safe consumption sites and
other harm reduction policies could help address the drug crisis.
Gupta, the director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy
(ONDCP), has said it’s critical to explore “any and every option” to reduce
overdose deaths, which could include allowing safe consumption sites for illegal
substances if the evidence supports their efficacy.
> Rhode Island Bill Would Temporarily Legalize Psilocybin Use, Home Cultivation
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Ben Adlin
Ben Adlin, a senior editor at Marijuana Moment, has been covering cannabis and
other drug policy issues professionally since 2011. He was previously a senior
news editor at Leafly, an associate editor at the Los Angeles Daily Journal and
a Coro Fellow in Public Affairs. He lives in Washington State.
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