US attorney: Injection sites a 'terrible idea'
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"These sites are a terrible idea and, more important, they are illegal," U.S. Attorney Andrew Lelling said of proposed supervised injection sites.
Adopting a policy of allowing addicts to inject drugs under medical supervision and without the threat of arrest would "amount to giving up" in the fight against opioid abuse and overdose deaths, U.S. Attorney Andrew Lelling wrote in an op-ed published by the Boston Globe.
"These sites are a terrible idea and, more important, they are illegal," Lelling wrote of the facilities — which state lawmakers have debated — where people addicted to drugs would be allowed to use pre-obtained narcotics and access counseling.
"Promoters of supervised injection sites need to understand that, short of legislative reform, any effort to open an injection site in Massachusetts will be met with federal enforcement," the U.S. attorney wrote.
Lelling, appointed as the top federal justice official in Massachusetts by President Donald Trump, last year warned state lawmakers that anyone who uses or works at such a facility would likely face federal charges "regardless of any state law or study."
The Massachusetts Senate last year considered an opioid addiction prevention bill that would have, under a Ways and Means proposal, authorized supervised sites for illegal drug use. The Senate ultimately adopted an amendment to study the idea.
Though Lelling took issue with studies that advocates for supervised injection facilities say show their effectiveness as harm reduction measures, he wrote that debating the merits of scientific studies "misses the point."
"This is a philosophical contest about how Americans should confront a social crisis. Injection sites normalize intravenous drug abuse, encourage a horrible addiction, and let down the people who suffer from it," Lelling wrote. "Promoters of these sites offer addicts little but failure — medical safety at the time of injection but, overall, mere complicity in a nightmarish cycle of addiction leading to death."
In Massachusetts, 1,518 people died of opioid overdoses in the first nine months of 2018, the Department of Public Health reported last year.
Boston Mayor Martin Walsh recently toured injection facilities in Toronto and Montreal and afterward told WBUR that he could see the possible potential of them. But he also said he was cognizant of the roadblocks to implementing them in the United States.
"I think people need to be educated on this. We would need a change or an exemption in federal law to even consider this," Walsh told WBUR. "We are not anywhere near where we need to be. Even if the Legislature approved this tomorrow in Massachusetts, we cannot do it."
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