SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — The California Legislature on Thursday approved a controversial bill that would allow Los Angeles, Oakland and San Francisco to set up places where opioid users can legally inject drugs under supervision.
The move followed more than a year of legislative deliberations, with supporters saying it would save lives while critics said it would encourage drug addiction.
After approval by the Assembly, the bill will be sent back to the state Senate for final consideration in August after lawmakers return from a month-long summer recess. Senators passed a slightly modified version more than a year ago without losing any votes.
The idea is to provide people who would otherwise use drugs with a place where they can inject their drugs. In addition, trained staff will be available to help if an accidental overdose occurs.
The move comes amid a nationwide opioid crisis and a skyrocketing increase in overdose deaths, particularly when users inadvertently ingest drugs laced with fentanyl.
In December, New York City opened the first two publicly accredited overdose prevention centers in the United States. They have intervened in more than 150 overdoses, although the facility does not have federal approval to operate. Rhode Island has approved a two-year pilot phase of such centers.
The US Department of Justice under the Biden administration recently indicated that it may be willing to allow such sites with “appropriate guardrails,” a reversal from the Trump administration, which won a lawsuit to block a safe consumption site in Philadelphia.
The assembly passed the proposal by 42 votes to 28, one vote more than necessary.
But there was bipartisan opposition, and some of the debate was personal. Two members, Carlos Villapudua and Freddie Rodriguez, who said their brothers died from drug abuse, were among the Democrats who opposed the proposal.
“This is not the only thing that will stop the fentanyl or opioid epidemic in our state, but it will help. It will help and save lives,” said Democratic Assemblyman Matt Haney, a former San Francisco community leader who represented the troubled Tenderloin neighborhood and introduced the bill in the Assembly.
However, some members of both parties said the sites would only make things worse, with MPs citing statistics from other countries.
“Sending the message to our kids, ‘Hey, we’re going to help you get your drug addiction under control,’ is not the answer,” said Republican Rep. Kelly Seyarto.
In 2020, about 700 San Francisco residents died of accidental drug overdoses – a record. Those deaths “far exceeded the number of people who died from COVID-19 in 2020,” when 261 deaths from the coronavirus were recorded, San Francisco Mayor London Breed noted, citing skyrocketing drug overdose rates when declaring a state of emergency in the Tenderloin district.
There were probably 1,000 opioid-related deaths in Los Angeles County last year, although not all of them were due to injections.
According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than 100,000 people died from drug overdoses across the country between April 2020 and April 2021, including about 10,000 Californians.
