BURLINGTON — Chittenden County State’s Attorney Sarah George will throw her support behind efforts to establish places in Vermont where people can safely inject heroin.
Safe injection sites are locations where people who are addicted to drugs — specifically heroin, which is often injected into the arm — can use them under medical supervision and without fear of legal trouble. George convened a commission in March to explore the use of such sites and issue a recommendation on whether they could work in Vermont.
“It was clear by our last meeting that it was not so much a question of whether we should do this, but a question of when,” George said during a news conference Wednesday.
Studies the commission cited in its report — also released Wednesday — show safe injection sites reduce overdose deaths, give users a path to treatment, don’t encourage more drug use, and end up paying for themselves through reduced health care and incarceration costs.
Not all public officials are on board with safe injection facilities. Shortly after George announced her support, Public Safety Commissioner Thomas Anderson released a statement in which he argued that a better strategy is to focus resources on preventing the use of opioids, and treating and supporting people in recovery.
“Facilitating the ongoing use of heroin through SIFs sends the wrong message, at the wrong time, to the wrong people,” Anderson said.
Anderson also warned that safe injection facilities could be costly to the state.
Advocates say making such sites available can be part of the solution to the nation’s opioid epidemic. Seattle is close to becoming the first U.S. city to open a safe harbor for opiate use, and Montreal opened three in June. Ithaca, New York, is also debating opening them.
Where exactly safe injection sites should be in Chittenden County is still an open question, but ideas are already being thrown around.
One option is the Safe Recovery center on Clarke Street in downtown Burlington, a Howard Center program aimed at preventing drug overdoses and reducing the infectious diseases spread by sharing needles. The program provides screening for HIV and other diseases, operates a needle exchange, and distributes naloxone, a drug effective in reversing overdoses.
“Our clients are terrified, and they want help. They want to stay alive. They want to get treatment,” said Grace Keller, program coordinator for Safe Recovery.
Safe Recovery did a survey of about 75 people it serves, and about 90 percent said they would use a safe injection site, Keller said.
Medical staff would have to join the team at the Safe Recovery center in order for it to become a safe injection site.
“We would be the most logical place to house it,” Keller said.
Heroin is illegal in Vermont and nationwide. George said she could, as the top law enforcement officer in Chittenden County, simply choose not to prosecute anyone who uses a safe injection site. But she would much rather have lawmakers make such facilities legal.
Burlington police say they would need a law in place in order to support safe injection sites.
“No human can ignore the value proposition of safe injection sites given the most important metric, reducing fatal overdoses,” wrote Burlington Deputy Police Chief Shawn Burke in a memo to George.
“However, the core tenet remains an act prohibited by State statute which the police cannot ignore,” Burke wrote.
Identical bills are in the Vermont House and Senate that would legalize safe injection sites statewide, but when they were introduced earlier this year, neither passed out of their respective committees.
The idea is relatively simple, said Sen. Chris Pearson, P/D-Chittenden, who is co-sponsoring the Senate bill, S.107.
“The bill just says, if you want to do this, you can,” Pearson said. It’s too early to tell how the measure will fare in the upcoming session, he said.
“It can directly save lives, but it also gets people into an environment where they’re close to being able to find resources to get treatment,” Pearson said.
George is hoping that with her office behind the effort and increased attention, lawmakers will make the bills a priority when they return to Montpelier for the 2018 session.
