State’s top public safety official has concerns over proposed Worcester safe injection site
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OnPoint NYC in New York City's Washington Heights neighborhood, one of the few existing safe injection sites in the country.
The state's top public safety official has concerns about safe injection sites, which the Department of Public Health has touted as a potential path towards preventing more fatal opioid-related overdoses.
Public Safety and Security Secretary Terry Reidy said Tuesday he was offering his personal perspective on sites when asked about them during a fiscal 2025 budget hearing. Sen. Michael Moore asked Reidy about the Worcester Board of Health's vote earlier this month supporting a pilot program for an overdose prevention center.
"I can talk personally. I would have some concerns and seeing exactly how a safe injection site would be set up," Reidy said at the hearing in Worcester as he acknowledged a DPH report on the topic.
"I think there'd be some significant concerns from a public safety standpoint. I think when you look across the country at some of the communities that have tried to put them in place, there's concerns -- there's concerns over them," the secretary said.
Massachusetts would need to legalize the sites, where medical professionals are available to intervene and prevent overdoses, before Worcester could move forward with its pilot, a city spokesman previously told the News Service. Proposals allowing cities and towns to open the sites received have received favorable reports from the Mental Health, Substance Use and Recovery Committee, but top Democrats have not put the topic up for votes despite calls to help stop preventable overdose deaths.
Reidy said he's assigned employees to evaluate safe injection sites from a "public safety standpoint" as a part of a broader information-gathering process underway in the Healey administration.
"We haven't had any contact with the city of Worcester," Reidy added.
DPH released a report in December endorsing the centers as a tool to reduce fatal overdoses. DPH Commissioner Robbie Goldstein said they "can be lifelines, serving not only as places of intervention, but as places of empathy, understanding, and healing."
Massachusetts logged 2,323 confirmed and estimated fatal opioid related overdoses between Oct. 1, 2022 and Sept. 30, 2023.
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