What to know about the effort to legalize Supervised Drug Consumption Sites and bring one into our South End neighborhood in 2024.
Supervised drug consumption sites (SCS) are places in a neighborhood where people are encouraged to go to inject or smoke fentanyl, methamphetamine, crack cocaine, or other drugs without interference and under the watch of staff or volunteers, who are supposed to intervene in case of signs of potential overdose. They don’t exist here currently, but a bill to legally authorize these facilities in Boston and throughout Massachusetts has the support of Mayor Wu, a sizable number of Beacon Hill lawmakers and a well-organized lobby of advocates/activists. The measure recently advanced out of a state legislative committee and looks to have a real chance to become law this year, despite almost no public awareness or debate over a concept that has been hugely controversial and repeatedly rejected elsewhere around the country. READ MORE
If SCS are legalized, the South End will almost certainly be the first Boston neighborhood targeted to host a drug consumption site. Proponents have said Mass and Cass is the “area of greatest need” for a site. And the Boston Public Health Commission—which supports legalization and is actively planning for how to open a site—has multiple South End properties, such as the current needle exchange (774 Albany) or the recently-created “low threshold” shelter at 727 Mass Ave, that could readily be utilized without requiring any community review or public process—which is crucial given that history shows few, if any, neighborhoods will willingly accept the sites.
The argument always offered for supervised drug consumption sites is that they “are proven to save lives”—but never do supporters cite any specific numbers of overdose deaths that the science says will be prevented. Likely this is because the very same studies advocates claim prove their point actually show results most people would regard as dismal failure: READ MORE
Supervised drug consumption sites are proven to have no positive impact on overall overdose mortality: research shows that a state that legalizes SCSs should not expect to see any reduction in its overdose death rate.
Even within localities where an SCS does exist, around one hundred overdose deaths will still occur for every one death the sites might avert, according to the research cited by advocates, including a recent study which projected that opening a very large SCS in Boston might have prevented 3 overdose deaths, out of the 352 overdose deaths occurring in 2022 in our city.
In Canada, which is the pioneer and world leader in supervised drug consumption sites, SCS facilities are increasingly being shut down over intolerable crime and disorder impacts on nearby residents and businesses. Existing and proposed sites are being sued by neighbors or protested and sometimes blocked before they can open. READ MORE
Many Canadians living or owning businesses near the sites are now “feeling like they were ‘sold a bill of goods’" by advocates, government officials and professed experts who’d promised that having a local SCS “would not have any negative impact on the neighbourhood”.
Canada’s forty or so SCS sites have struggled to successfully handle the transition from old-school heroin to fentanyl and the rise of polysubstance use that adds meth, crack and illicit prescription pharmaceuticals to the mix and made drugs and addiction far more unmanageable and destructive to the addicted and host communities alike.
A supervised drug consumption site costs money to operate—$1.4 million to $3.9 million a year, according to one recent analysis specific to Greater Boston. This means SCSs drain funding away from other anti-overdose fatality strategies that could be more cost and outcome effective, such as access to medication assisted treatment, or wider distribution of fentanyl test strips or Narcan.
Key points to know:
Research shows Supervised Drug Consumption Sites have no positive impact whatsoever on state-level overdose fatality rates and are extremely ineffective even locally (failing to prevent 99 out of 100 overdose deaths where they exist).
In Canada where they’re legal, Supervised Drug Consumption Sites are increasingly being shut down due to intolerable crime and disorder impacts on neighbors.
Politicians will use the existence of a South End Supervised Drug Consumption Site as yet another rationale to further concentrate active drug user housing and services in the South End (comfortably well away from their own voters/constituents)—by definition, the sites are the opposite of decentralization.
Supervised Drug Consumption Sites are very expensive to operate and will drain millions of dollars a year away from more effective solutions.