BURLINGTON, Vt. (WCAX) – Burlington will soon join New York City and Providence, Rhode Island, as one of the few cities in the U.S. to have safe injection sites. The sites offer supervised drug use to intervene in a possible overdose and hope to connect people with treatment.
Open drug use and syringes strewn across Burlington has become all too common. Now, those who spend time on the streets are hoping an overdose prevention center, or OPC, in the Queen City will help those struggling with substance abuse.
“People wouldn’t have so many overdoses, you know — people getting Narcan — but there’s not always somebody there and people get scared. And when they get scared, they tend to take off,” said Anthony Duchaine of Burlington.
“If they have a safe place to do it, that’s fine and dandy, but it does not belong in the public place,” said Clarence Lamore Jr., who says he is homeless.
Burlington Mayor Emma Mulvaney-Stanak has long been a supporter of overdose prevention centers. The new law, which was vetoed by the governor but overridden by lawmakers on Monday, establishes a pilot program funded through 2028 by opioid settlement funds. “We are literally losing lives that we do not need to lose,” Mulvaney-Stanak said. She says the city will now begin looking at zoning regulations and where the site will be.
Considerations include avoiding oversaturation of services in one area as well as being near transportation and where people are already using drugs. “I have a great responsibility to the people, that the people whose lives that we’re trying to save here and impact and the people trying to we’re trying to help encourage get the treatment. That’s an important thing to get right. So, I want to make sure that we are not rushing things, but moving with an urgency that is really needed on this critical issue.”
Advocates say the site will save lives, reduce syringes on the street, decrease public drug use, and allow drug users to better access services. Opponents say it’s a costly experiment that will take resources away from proven treatment methods.
Vermont Health Commissioner Dr. Mark Levine says the health department is ready to begin making the rules and policies for the site as outlined in the legislation. However, he wants to temper expectations that this is a part of a multi-pronged approach at addressing the drug crisis. “None of the timelines go as quickly as people would have imagined they would go. These are very complex issues and the opioid use disorder itself is a very complex set of circumstances that requires a lot of ingenuity in terms of developing solutions,” he said.
The mayor says that she hopes that the overdose prevention center will be open within a year.