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Tag: safe injection facilities

  • Andrew Yang Wants To Invest In Safe Consumption Sites

    Andrew Yang Wants To Invest In Safe Consumption Sites

    “I would not only decriminalize opiates for personal use but I would also invest in safe consumption sites around the country.”

    Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang discussed his plans to decriminalize opioids and the need for harm reduction sites during an interview featured on The Hill released this week. 

    “I would not only decriminalize opiates for personal use but I would also invest in safe consumption sites around the country,” Yang told Krystal Ball in a recent interview. “You go home and you’re still addicted and you wind up in many cases overdosing again. We need to refer these people to counseling, treatment and safe consumption sites as needed.”

    Yang took Purdue Pharma and the government to task for their roles in the ongoing opioid epidemic.

    “At this point we have to say this was a systemic failure of capitalism run amok in the worst and most destructive way possible and that our government should come clean, claw back the resources from the drug companies and put them to work in communities to try to make people stronger and healthier—but also say to individuals who are struggling with addiction that this is not a crime of personal character, this is a systemic problem and if you’re using drugs and addicted, we should be referring you to counseling and treatment and not a prison cell,” he said.

    Julian Castro Is In Favor Of Safe Consumption Sites Too

    Julian Castro, another Democratic presidential candidate has made headlines recently for his statements on safe consumption sites. Castro discussed his views and policies while speaking at a forum hosted by the Iowa Harm Reduction Coalition. 

    “I would like these communities to be able to pursue these safe consumption spaces and essentially pilot out how they work,” he said, according to Marijuana Moment. “I believe that we owe it to the effort to see how we can make sure that we avoid [overdose deaths].

    “We’ve been trying it one way for so long and I also believe, having been a mayor of a city, that one of the values of local communities is that they can try out policy in their own community and measure the results and see how it works. The system that we have in place right now doesn’t seem to be working very much at all. Whether it’s Philadelphia or its some of the other cities that have tried it, I believe that we should allow for the piloting of these programs and that that will help us come to a determination nationally about the approach.”

    Sanders & Warren

    Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren have also expressed support for safe consumption sites in their platforms. 

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Safehouse Founders Talk Overdose Prevention Sites’ Recent Victory, Future Challenges

    Safehouse Founders Talk Overdose Prevention Sites’ Recent Victory, Future Challenges

    The Philadelphia-based organization was given the green light to open the first overdose prevention sites in the U.S.

    Soon after a judge ruled in their favor, the organization set to open the first ever overdose prevention sites in the United States reflected on their recent victory in an op-ed.

    This month, a federal judge ruled that Safehouse may go ahead with efforts to open two sites (also known as harm reduction sites or supervised injection facilities) in Philadelphia. The ruling was a clear victory over the federal government, which argued in court that the proposed facilities violated a provision of the Controlled Substances Act.

    “Opioid users would be free to come to the sites and inject their products with clean needles, and health workers would be on hand to make sure no one overdoses. At no point would we distribute or even touch controlled substances; the user would bring them to our facility. This isn’t a substitution of treatment, but it is safer than having people use drugs alone or on the streets,” wrote the three founders of Safehouse, the organization that proposed to open the sites, in a Washington Post opinion piece.

    They would be the first such (legal) facilities in the United States.

    We Could No Longer Wait As The Death Toll Continued To Rise

    Ed Rendell, a former governor of Pennsylvania, Jose A. Benitez, executive director of Prevention Point Philly and Ronda B. Goldfein, executive director of the AIDS Law Project of Pennsylvania founded Safehouse because “we could no longer wait as the death toll continued to rise almost unabated,” they wrote.

    The face of Philadelphia’s drug crisis is Kensington, a neighborhood so notorious for its drug problem that The New York Times called it “the Walmart of Heroin” in a feature last year. 

    Rendell, Benitez and Goldfein noted that 1,217 people in Philadelphia died of opioid overdoses in 2017. “The problem was, of course, that most people who overdose do so alone, and even if naloxone was on the table next to them, they couldn’t administer it because an overdose renders a person unconscious,” they wrote.

    Safehouse’s mission is to save lives, which overdose prevention sites have proven to do in Canada and about 120 other such sites around the world.

    “It is important to note that we, like other harm reduction advocates, do not believe supervised injection sites are the answer to the opioid crisis… but we do know that supervised injection sites will save lives,” they wrote.

    With the momentum from their recent victory in court, the founders say, “We hope it will be one of many across the country.”

    Suits Followed By Countersuits

    This month, U.S. District Judge Gerald A. McHugh ruled that the facilities were not in violation of federal law, as the federal government tried to argue in court.

    Pennsylvania prosecutors and the Department of Justice filed a civil lawsuit against Safehouse in February, trying to stop the organization from moving forward with opening the facilities, which had the endorsement of local officials including Mayor Jim Kenney.

    In suing Safehouse, the government argued that the facilities would violate the “crack house” statute under the Controlled Substances Act, which made it a crime to “knowingly open, lease, rent, use, or maintain any place, whether permanently or temporarily… for the purpose of unlawfully manufacturing, storing, distributing, or using a controlled substance.”

    Safehouse countersued in federal court, which concluded with the judge’s recent ruling.

    McHugh said in his decision that it was clear that overdose prevention sites were not intended targets of the Congress in 1986 when they created the “crack house” statute.

    “There is no support for the view that Congress meant to criminalize projects such as that proposed by Safehouse,” McHugh wrote. “Safe injection sites were not considered by Congress and could not have been, because their use as a possible harm reduction strategy among opioid users had not yet entered public discourse.”

    McHugh determined that Safehouse’s mission did not clash with the law. “The ultimate goal of Safehouse’s proposed operation is to reduce drug use, not facilitate it, and accordingly, [the “crack house” statute] does not prohibit Safehouse’s proposed conduct.”

    Despite their victory, the founders—Rendell, Benitez, and Goldfein—acknowledged in the Washington Post op-ed that the fight is far from over.

    “While we may have won that first legal battle, we still have hurdles to clear,” they wrote.

    “We hope that our victory emboldens other cities to venture into setting up their own harm reduction sites. While our federal ruling is not binding on other jurisdictions, we believe its logic and reasoned interpretation will help proposed facilities in places such as New York, San Francisco, Boston, Seattle and Denver when and if they face court challenges,” they wrote.

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Feds Try To Block Philly Safe Injection Site

    Feds Try To Block Philly Safe Injection Site

    Advocates and opponents of a proposed safe injection site pled their case during a recent federal hearing. 

    In Philadelphia, drug addiction is rampant. The city has struggled to clean up homeless encampments riddled with drug use and disease, but that just pushed the problem elsewhere.

    Now, the city’s mayor and other officials support a controversial plan: opening America’s first supervised injection site. 

    The federal government, however, is fighting to stop that. The Trump administration filed a lawsuit in February, and on Thursday (Sept. 5) during a federal hearing, William M. McSwain, United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, personally argued that the proposed safe injection site is illegal. 

    Crack House Statute

    “If this opens up, the whole point of it existing is for addicts to come and use drugs,” McSwain said, according to the Philly Voice. That would violate the so-called “crack house statute,” a portion of the Controlled Substances Act introduced in the 1980s that makes it illegal to “manage any site for the purpose of unlawfully using a controlled substance,” the Voice reported. 

    In court, advocates and opponents debated the purpose of a safe injection site. McSwain and his team argued that the purpose is for people to use drugs, making the site illegal. But attorneys for Safehouse, a nonprofit that plans to open the proposed site, said that the purpose is to save lives and connect people with treatment. 

    Saving Lives, Offering Treatment

    “I dispute the idea that we’re inviting people for drug use. We’re inviting people to stay to be proximal to medical support,” said Ilana Eisenstein, chief attorney for Safehouse. 

    Ronda Goldfein, vice president of Safehouse, said that although the idea seems radical, it is not inherently different from the work that’s already being done with needle exchanges and Narcan programs. 

    She said, “If the law allows for the provision of clean equipment, and the law allows for the provision of naloxone to save your life, does the law really not allow you to provide support in that thin sliver in between those federal permissible activities?”

    However, McSwain argued that the seemingly small difference is a big deal. 

    “If Safehouse pulled an emergency truck up to the park where people are shooting up, I don’t think [the statute] would reach that,” he said. “If they had people come into the unit, that would be different.”

    The judge in the case could make a ruling at this point, or could request more hearings to decide whether or not the plans for the safe injection site can move forward. Safehouse and many people around Philly are holding out hope for another tool in the fight against overdose deaths. 

    “We recognize there’s a crisis here,” Goldfein said. “The goal would be to open as soon as possible.”

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders Endorse Supervised Injection Facilities

    Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders Endorse Supervised Injection Facilities

    Warren, Sanders and de Blasio are the only 2020 presidential candidates who have voiced support for SIFs. 

    US Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders endorsed safer consumption spaces in late August, a position lauded by harm reduction advocates.

    Safer consumption spaces, also known as supervised injection facilities (SIFs) or overdose prevention sites, “are clinical but community-oriented spaces” where people may use under medical supervision and have a place to access information about treatment for substance use disorder.

    Those in favor of SIFs say “the facilities keep people alive during the drug-using phases of their lives, while also offering them a hand up to a new and better life.” 

    Their Endorsements

    Both Warren and Sanders, who are running for president, said they would support SIFs, if elected.

    As reported by The Hill, Sanders would “legalize safe injection sites and needle exchanges around the country, and support pilot programs for supervised injection sites, which have been shown to substantially reduce drug overdose deaths.”

    Warren would “support evidence-based safe injection sites and needle exchanges and expand the availability” of naloxone.

    Lindsay LaSalle, director of public health law and policy with the Drug Policy Alliance, said the candidates’ endorsement is “significant.” “It shows that there are candidates who, in the context of the opioid crisis… that they’re willing to think outside of the box and look at interventions that have proven successful in other countries.”

    SIFs Around The World

    There are approximately 120 safer consumption spaces currently operating in 12 countries, according to the Drug Policy Alliance. 

    A visit to Vancouver’s Insite was able to convince Philadelphia Police Commissioner Richard Ross that his city needed to follow suit. He said the experience changed him from being “adamantly against [the sites] to having an open mind.”

    Safehouse, the organization trying to open the nation’s first safer consumption spaces in Philadelphia, will fight the good fight in court against the federal government, which has sued the organization for violating federal law.

    “Either way it’s decided, it will set the first legal precedent in the country,” said LaSalle.

    Harm reduction and recovery advocate, Ryan Hampton, told Truthout that he would have attempted recovery sooner had he had access to safer consumption spaces.

    “I would have found my way into recovery much sooner, because I would have established trust with a clinician, a qualified health care provider, instead of some shady treatment center that was just trying to rip off my insurance company, or my mother,” Hampton said.

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Most Drug Users Willing To Utilize Safe Injection Sites, Study Finds

    Most Drug Users Willing To Utilize Safe Injection Sites, Study Finds

    A new study found that 77% of drug user were willing to utilize safe consumption sites.

    “Safe consumption sites” provide a space to use drugs under medical supervision, away from the streets and with clean equipment such as syringes. They have existed abroad since the ‘80s but not in the U.S. (at least not legally). Some are for them, some are against them. But what about the drug using community?

    Safe consumption programs (also known as supervised injection facilities or SIFs) in Canada and Australia have reported reductions in fatal overdoses and the spread of HIV and hepatitis B and C. As the U.S. faces crisis-level opioid abuse and overdose, it is now forced to confront the potential of SIFs across the country.

    A new study confirmed the willingness of “high-risk opioid users” to utilize these sites as a form of harm reduction. In a survey of 326 people who reported using heroin, fentanyl and illicit opioid pills, about 77% of them reported that they were willing to go to SIFs.

    Among the respondents, 60% reported habitually using drugs in “public or semi-public” spaces, and more than a third had overdosed in the past six months.

    The research was led by a team at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and was published in the Journal of Urban Health in June.

    “On the whole, we found a strong willingness to use safe consumption spaces,” said study lead author Ju Nyeong Park. “This is important because often the voices of people who use drugs are not included in policy debates or in the implementation of public health interventions.”

    The research confirmed that the majority of respondents are “motivated to be safe and take precautions to reduce their exposure to harm,” said study senior investigator Susan Sherman.

    “It’s encouraging because even though these are people engaging in very high-risk behaviors in very different contexts… they were willing to use this harm-reduction intervention,” said Park.

    100 Safe Consumption Sites In 12 Countries

    Currently there are more than 100 such facilities in 12 countries, though none are in the United States. A legal battle taking place in Philadelphia may affect the future of SIFs in the U.S.

    In April, it was reported that Safehouse, a local non-profit organization involved in efforts to establish the nation’s first SIFs in Philadelphia, countersued the government in its attempt to block efforts to open the sites. They argued that SIFs are less about drugs and more about providing a medical service, in addition to giving people the option to access treatment.

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Feds Sue To Stop Safe Injection Site In Philadelphia

    Feds Sue To Stop Safe Injection Site In Philadelphia

    Federal authorities are invoking a “crack house statute” from the ’80s in their attempt to stop the opening of the site.

    Federal authorities in Philadelphia are suing to stop the opening of a safe injection site in the city. 

    “These folks have good intentions and they’re trying their best to combat the opioid epidemic,” William McSwain, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, told NPR. “But this step of opening an injection site crosses the line.”

    McSwain is suing to stop Safehouse, a nonprofit, from opening a supervised injection site. The organization has said that it has support of city officials and plans to open the site this year. However, McSwain said that the site—where people would bring drugs to inject under medical supervision—is illegal.  

    “If Safehouse or others want to open this type of site, they need to steer their efforts to get the law changed,” he said. 

    The federal authorities cite a portion of the Controlled Substances Act that was written during the 1980s when people were concerned about the crack epidemic. The so-called crack house statute makes it illegal to operate a place to make, store, distribute or use illegal drugs. The law was originally written to prosecute people operating crack houses, but authorities have used it in other circumstances, said Alex Kreit, a law professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law in San Diego and a drug policy specialist. 

    However, Kreit noted that this is the first time authorities will try to use the law against a safe injection site. 

    “It is completely untested in terms of how federal law will apply to safe injection sites,” he said. “People will be watching this very closely—particularly in other cities that have expressed their intention of starting a safe injection site.”

    Although Philadelphia has been at the forefront of the supervised injection site debate, other cities from around the country are considering similar measures. There are no safe injection sites in the U.S., but data from Canada and other countries indicate that such facilities can help stop the spread of disease and reduce overdose deaths because medical professionals are on hand.

    Proponents also argue that the sites will be able to connect drug users with resources including treatment. 

    Despite this, McSwain said in a letter to Safehouse that the law “makes no exception for entities, such as Safehouse, who claim a benevolent purpose.”

    Safehouse’s vice president and attorney Ronda Goldfein said that she’s confident that a federal judge will recognize that the site is not the intended target of the statute. 

    “We have a disagreement on the analysis and intention of the law. We don’t think it was intended to prevent activities such as this, and perhaps it will take a court’s ruling to move the issue forward.”

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • How I Came To "Believe” In Safe Injection Sites

    How I Came To "Believe” In Safe Injection Sites

    The part of me that understands service is the backbone of my recovery, demands something other than pretending that there aren’t options available to people still suffering.  

    So last night I’m at a town hall event on drug addiction and someone mentions safe injection sites in the audience. My heart begins to pound from having my hand up and hoping to get called on, so I can ask about this, among other topics.  

    The panel looks around at each other trying to see who will bite first, as it’s clearly a controversial topic. Finally, the one “token recovery guy” speaks up, “You know, studies are positive, but people are very opposed to the idea, and the last time we had a discussion about it a fight nearly broke out.”

    And so, I wanted to get up. And I wanted to have that fight.  

    But I was taught to cease fighting anything and anyone. What about fighting substance use disorder? I thought my disease was doing pushups? Certainly, this disease is wreaking havoc across our country, especially with the younger generations, and what are we, as a community, prepared to do about it?  

    Who is fighting on the front lines? While communities claim “not in my backyard” absolution, so do the “anonymous people” who are in recovery in this country. They are told to have no opinion on outside issues. But, to me, this isn’t an outside issue, because the part of me that understands service is the backbone of my recovery, demands something other than pretending that there aren’t options available to people still suffering.  

    Thankfully, I have met many who are rank and file generals in this fight, however compared to the #’s we could have, it is disappointing, and makes creating change in our communities even more difficult.  

    Clearly, safe injection options are not a solution, but saying “he or she must not have wanted it enough” when they drop out of the only pathway we are offering, which for mainstream recovery is a 12-step program, is an even less valid answer.  

    12-step can be successful, alongside other treatment modalities, but it is often seen as “the” solution and not “a” solution.

    And what about statistics? Research shows that overdose rates decrease around the area of the safe injection site. If this statistic alone isn’t a good enough reason to support them how about that the rate of people who were entering treatment in those areas increased? 

    Look, don’t get me wrong, I was once on the other side of this conversation. I had a lot of misguided beliefs before I entered recovery. I once thought when I was 16 and my drinking career had just begun, that if I could get my dad to give me driving lessons while I was drinking, I wouldn’t have a drinking and driving problem!

    Clearly being open-minded that my own thinking could be wrong is an important aspect of recovery, and so while I was made to think I should be open-minded about the program, I was indoctrinated to believe recovery was a static black-and-white thing, and that I was a miracle because I didn’t use, and while this may be true, it also underlined another assumption, that those who didn’t make it were not entitled to these miracles.  

    The idea that there is a level of participation required for someone to enter recovery is not lost on me, but the fact of the matter is, more and more people, especially those from the younger generations, are struggling to find their way in recovery and our answer to the staggering overdose and relapse rates is “they must not have been ready.”  

    So now what? What do we do with people who aren’t ready? Tell them to go out and give their substances another try? Drugs which could easily kill them in one shot? In my mind, if someone is not ready for abstinence-based recovery it isn’t that they have failed, it’s that they may not have reached that point yet, they may never reach that point, and who are we to say what that should look like.  

    There are many people who reach a significant “bottom,” only to find themselves using again. Can anyone say, who is honest with themselves, that a “bottom” is what creates recovery? Surely it can help, but there are many who hit that point and beyond, and for those people, while their lives continue to crumble around them, what is available?

    To me, this is why we need to offer as many solutions to this problem as we can. Not offering alternative methods like safe injection sites, or medically assisted treatment, is like saying to someone who has diabetes they can’t go to the hospital for support, or shouldn’t have to take insulin, they should just use their higher power, and if they can’t clearly, they don’t want to be healthy enough.

    Change is possible without necessarily being at a point of relying on grace only. While I believe in grace and have my own stance on faith, I believe this “coveted” winners circle of recovery is an issue and is not saving lives, especially amongst young people.

    Do I believe willingness is an important key to recovery? Certainly, yet how many of us become willing along our path of using? So why would we not want to create opportunities for the people who are using, to not only stay alive, but be near recovery support services?  

    When someone has a reoccurrence of use, do we no longer consider them in recovery? Therefore, by that logic, anyone who is in active use has the potential to effect this same change in their lives. Hospitals, fire houses, police stations, med express, anywhere, anytime someone wants out of the cycle, it should be as easy as getting a flu shot. It is that easy to get high or drunk.

    Finding drugs is way easier than finding recovery, unfortunately, we don’t seem to be making much headway on that stat. It shouldn’t be so difficult to get help, and yet it is. Clearly, we have quite a way to go, and so while we stand at the frontlines arguing for much-needed treatment options, housing options, peer support options for people in early recovery, we need to also keep our eye on how we can affect those who haven’t gotten to that point yet.    

    So, I didn’t get up and fight at the town hall meeting, because I know that the only way change will be affected is if compassion and reason win over misunderstanding and hatred. The only way we can win, and by we, I mean the parents who lost children to overdoses, and by we, I mean the advocates who mentor peers who end up overdosed in alley ways, and never make it home to their families, is if we can convince society that shaming people is not working and giving them opportunities for change are the best ideas we have currently.   

    I understand clearly that this option is seen as enabling to some. That we are encouraging people to use by providing needles and a safe place to go. The concept is not lost on me, but current models are not working. Prevention talks often fall on deaf ears, and while it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t continue to try to reach people, it does mean we need to get real about whether we are doing all we can do to help prevent overdose deaths in this country. 

    If someone who is opposed has a better idea of how we can get the people in our communities, who are using illicit substances, out of the shadows and into the light where we can see them and help them, please by all means share it.  

    To me the big bad wolf in this situation is that we would have to admit as a community, that people in our community, have heroin problems. We don’t like to admit that, and unfortunately it’s killing people.  

    I would argue that whatever motives you have for being opposed to this option, check them against the idea that centralizing use as best as possible helps to a.) measure your community and its needs, b.) provide safety and support to a vulnerable part of the population c.) encourage the next step for people to move on with their lives and d.) minimize the risk to police and health care workers responding to overdoses.  

    One of these reasons alone in my mind is enough to at least give it a try. Saving just one life means so much, especially if it is your child, your brother, your sister or your parent. Sharing this pain with too many people in too short of a time period is how I came to believe in safe Injection sites. 

    Erik Beresnoy is a father, advocate, and a writer on topics that range from recovery, and spirituality to music and philosophy.  Erik has been an active member of the recovery movement since 2008, when he himself entered recovery, and began to not only repair his life but to also seek help repair his community by working to implement new strategies. His current projects include Empowerment Coaching for the Ammon Foundation, and implementing a transformational program in NYC called Dare to Dream for Synergy Education. He is a certified recovery coach as well as a board member for Rockland Recovery Homes. His other works can be viewed at soberspiritmeditation.com.

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Surgeon General On Safe Injection Sites: There Are More Viable Options

    Surgeon General On Safe Injection Sites: There Are More Viable Options

    “From a physician’s point of view, there’s no such thing as a safe injection site. You can still die,” Adams said at a recent conference.

    Surgeon General Jerome M. Adams has again expressed reservations about supervised injection sites, also known as safe injection facilities (SIFs), as a harm reduction strategy for fighting the opioid crisis.  

    Speaking at a conference hosted by the Independence Blue Cross Foundation in Philadelphia—titled “Someone You Know: Facing the Opioid Crisis Together”—Adams voiced support for the opioid overdose reversal drug naloxone and medication-assisted treatment (MAT), but in regard to SIF, Adams doubled down on previous statements that urged caution before communities embraced such sites.

    “From a pragmatic point of view, let’s crawl first before we try to figure out how to sprint—particularly on controversial policy solutions,” said Adams.

    At the same time, Adams stated that he did not want to dismiss SIFs as an alternative form of treatment. “It’s not to discourage discussion,” he said. But he also noted that “from a physician’s point of view, there’s no such thing as a safe injection site. You can still die. You can still get an infection. You can still get endocarditis. You can still have negative outcomes even when you’re injecting in a supervised fashion with illegal substances.”

    In its coverage of the conference, Philly Voice quoted Adams’ comments about strategies that have shown to be more effective than granting access to supervised injection.

    “There’s still a lot of low-hanging fruit out there, a lot of evidence-based interventions which have been accepted by the community that still needs to be optimized,” he said, referring to both MAT and naloxone. “There’s still so many more things we could be doing to optimize warm handoffs in connection to treatment. Let’s focus our energy on the things that already exist and aren’t optimized.”

    Adams’ stance on SIF differs in tone from that of the Trump administration, which has expressed no reservation in opposing such facilities. Both also contrast the opinion of Luke Gorman, co-founder of the recovery support group The Flock, who was also on the panel with Adams at the conference.

    “It’s my personal opinion that [SIFs] would be an incredible effective measure to save lives,” said Gorman, who is in recovery from opioid dependency. “Right now, with the epidemic and the proportions that it’s reached, saving lives should be in the forefront of all of our minds.”

    Gorman’s take was echoed by Daniel J. Hilferty, CEO of Independence Blue Cross and another speaker on the panel. “It’s not up to us as to whether we’re pro-safe injection sites or we’re opposed to safe injection sites,” he said. “We just want to create a web, as a company connected with other partners, to catch every single person that we can and help them find that right path to true professional services and treatment.”

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Temporary Overdose Prevention Site Gets Extension

    Temporary Overdose Prevention Site Gets Extension

    The site was expected to close by September’s end, but the government made a last-minute decision to extend it for another month.

    At the end of September, the government of Ontario province in Canada decided to extend operations of its Temporary Overdose Prevention Site (TOPS) through October—but with no current plans for a permanent site, the community says it will be ready to pick up where TOPS left off.

    “If the government was going to let these people down then our community needed to step up,” said community organizer Blair Henry.

    TOPS, located in the city of London, was expected to close at the end of September, but the government made a last-minute decision to extend the site for at least one more month.

    TOPS is the first sanctioned supervised consumption facility (i.e. supervised injection facility or SIF) in Ontario. The first SIF in North America, Insite, resides in British Columbia province in Vancouver. A handful of American cities are planning to establish SIFs as well, despite opposition by the U.S. government.

    According to Canada’s Global News, about 2,000 people have visited TOPS 8,000 times since it opened in February. The non-profit that runs TOPS—Regional HIV/AIDS Connection—estimates that there have been about 400 drug-related deaths in London and greater Middlesex County in the last decade.

    Currently TOPS remains a temporary program while the Ontario government considers a permanent site. While there is no guarantee of a permanent program, volunteers are prepared to serve the community if TOPS should close for good.

    Last month Blair Henry organized about 200 volunteers to help operate a “pop-up tent” in the heart of London—equipped with medical supplies and treatment services—in case TOPS did close at the end of September.

    But even though the government extended the program for one more month, Henry’s group, This Tent Saves Lives, still has work to do. “We have to help use this public momentum to inform Doug Ford (premier of Ontario) that there is support for this project,” said Henry.

    “There will be an overdose prevention site of some sort that will be erected should that funding (for TOPS) go, but we are going to make sure that that messaging gets out so we can avoid that,” said Henry.

    Another potential safety net for drug users—should TOPS close down in the near future—is to dispatch public health workers on bicycles throughout London.

    According to the London Free Press, city health officials is considering a plan to reach drug users on the street with naloxone, medical supplies, and other harm-reduction supplies. A similar program exists in Vancouver.

    “In urban cores, cycling tends to be the most efficient way of getting around,” said Chris Mackie, medical officer of health for the Middlesex-London Health Unit. “One thing we would do, that we’ve worked on with the London Bicycle Cafe, is we would put our staff on the street on bicycles, with naloxone, so that they’re traveling around.”

    View the original article at thefix.com