Doctors, advocates press Massachusetts legislature for safe drug consumption sites ‘empirically proven to save lives’

Years ago, Somerville Mayor Joseph Curtatone believed supervised consumption sites for drug users were a bad idea.

But the 55-year-old mayor — who admitted Monday that he didn’t always handle his own brother’s and cousin’s addiction struggles with enough “humanity and decency” — now finds himself an advocate, as his city looks to host the state’s first safe consumption site and as lawmakers consider bills to decriminalize the sites, increase treatment opportunities and address a statewide epidemic of overdose deaths.

“What had moved me completely the other way is the facts and the data,” Curtatone said Monday along with a host of health professionals, advocates and lawmakers testifying before the state legislature’s Joint Committee on Mental Health, Substance Use and Recovery. “We need to de-stigmatize addiction, have an open heart and look at the data.”

Curtatone was just one of many speakers urging lawmakers to advance safe consumption site legislation out of committee in an effort to save hundreds of lives and help blunt the transmission of HIV, hepatitis C and other illnesses. The leaders behind H.2088 hope to create a 10-year pilot program for at least two sites “that utilize harm reduction tools, including clinical monitoring of the consumption of pre-obtained controlled substances in the presence of trained staff.” The sites would provide clean injection supplies, collect used hypodermic needles and syringes, and refer drug users to addiction treatment and other services.

Lawmakers pointed to data that showed overdose deaths reduced 35% after the opening of a safe consumption site in Vancouver. In more than 100 sites around the world, there have been zero overdose deaths, Rep. Dylan Fernandes testified.

The sites create a “pathway to recovery for drug users, save lives, get people into treatment and make the community a safer place,” he said. Communities with sites have reported decreases in the public use of drugs and discarded syringes, reductions in local health care costs and hospitalizations, and reduced disease transmission, Fernandes added. Meanwhile, without sites in place, the state spends roughly $2 billion on the epidemic “for only marginal gains,” he said.

According to the People Place and Health Collective at Brown University, more than 2,100 people died from an opioid-related overdose in Massachusetts last year. The state reports the eighth-highest rate of overdose mortality in the U.S., and between 2012 and 2018, opioid-involved deaths in Somerville jumped fivefold.

In Boston, officials have looked to tackle a rise in violent crimes and public health concerns around the intersection of Massachusetts Avenue and Melnea Cass Boulevard, where advocates and law enforcement leaders have also pressed to ensure access to community-based services and treatment for those grappling with substance use disorder, mental illness, poverty and homelessness. Suffolk County Sheriff Steve Tompkins recently proposed to move up to 100 people against their will into vacant floors of a facility previously used to hold U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detainees, The Boston Globe reported.

In Western Massachusetts, the under-resourced Berkshire County has seen an overdose rate 10% higher than the national average and saw a 44% increase in fatal overdoses as the rest of the state saw a 5% uptick, according to the latest annual report cited by District Attorney Andrea Harrington.

Lack of housing and transportation, rural isolation, trauma and stigma, socioeconomic stress and poor treatment infrastructure were the leading factors, Harrington testified. Her office is doing “more with less,” as staff and state troopers assigned to her team have been reduced in recent years from 14 to 10, she said.

“The need to act and implement a harm reduction infrastructure to save lives is urgent,” she said. She added that safe consumption sites “are empirically proven to save lives,” and called for a proactive, multifaceted approach that shifts the focus of the justice system toward treatment, instead of prosecution, for those addicted to drugs.

Boston City Councilor Frank Baker, who noted that he lost a brother to heroin use 30 years ago, was one of a few voices against a safe injection site as a plan for “Mass and Cass.” He said he doesn’t question “the fact that they save lives,” but said the state should focus on treatment centers and other efforts, including Tompkins’ plan. If a pilot program for safe consumption sites is approved, he urged officials to focus on Somerville, not the “Mass and Cass” area, which he described as a “living hell” that’s led to all the parks in his district “being used as bathrooms now.”

“We need to move people into services,” he said. “We are at a breaking point.”

The push for safe consumption sites is backed by the Massachusetts Medical Society, the Massachusetts Hospital Association and the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts. But according to The Associated Press, Gov. Charlie Baker in 2019 said the sites would violate federal law, citing former U.S. Attorney Andrew Lelling’s opinion that both drug users and site employees could face federal charges even if Massachusetts updated state laws to allow the sites.

Dr. Jennifer Brody, director of HIV services at the Boston Health Care for the Homeless Program, said the opioid epidemic has led to spikes in HIV cases “among the city’s most marginalized,” many of whom “have lost faith in our health care system and actively avoid it.”

With lack of housing options and without supervised consumption sites, her organization’s small, traumatized and overwhelmed staff, which has been hand-delivering HIV testing materials and offering a range of assistance to people in the “Mass and Cass” area, cannot “stem the tide” or “stop enough people dying from overdose,” Brody said.

Noting she was a young Boston mother herself, Brody said there is no evidence of increased drug trafficking or violence in areas that have established supervised sites around the world, making the case that instead, “quality of life improves for everyone.”

“We need safe consumption sites and need them right now,” she said, arguing they would reduce overdose death, cut down HIV transmission and help increase engagement with health care systems that otherwise would go untrusted and underutilized.

Related Content:

•Boston authorities expect dozens of arrests this summer targeting rise in violent, serious crimes around Massachusetts Avenue and Melnea Cass Boulevard

•Massachusetts considers allowing supervised drug-use sites

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