Judge clears path for Philadelphia nonprofit to open safe-injection site to combat overdoses

A federal judge has paved the way for a facility to open in Philadelphia that would allow and supervise the injection of illegal drugs, an arrangement that would be the first of its kind in the United States.

The ruling sparked anger among those where the facility is scheduled to open but support from some social workers and other advocates who believe it will be effective in bringing help to drug users.

Philadelphia said in early 2018 that it welcomed private organizations to set up such a safe-injection site amid a stunning rise in opioid overdose deaths. But last February, a US Attorney in Pennsylvania sued Safehouse, a private nonprofit looking to open such a site, saying that the injection sites violate federal law.

US District Judge Gerald Austin McHugh ruled Tuesday that the nation’s first safe injection site for illicit drug users can open in South Philadelphia. The US Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania has said it will appeal the latest order, according to a press release.

Prosecutors had argued that such a site would be illegal, but McHugh found it did not violate federal law.

The idea of the safe-injection sites is to get heroin, fentanyl and other drug use off of public streets and into medically supervised facilities. The organizers hope this will prevent overdose deaths, prevent the spread of HIV and Hepatitus C, limit drug-related crime and litter, and offer addicts a range of social, legal and housing services.

“The goal is to get people off the street, save their lives, and get them into treatment when they’re ready,” said Ronda Goldfein, executive director of the AIDS Law Project of Pennsylvania and vice president of Safehouse.

Safehouse would operate the safe-injection site and it would be privately funded, she said at a press conference on Wednesday.

Former governor and Philadelphia mayor Ed Rendell is a board member of Safehouse and praised the latest legal victory.

“I think people misunderstand what Safehouse is. It’s a clean injection facility. We don’t handle narcotics. People have to bring their narcotics with them. We give them clean needles and we make sure that the needles they use in Safehouse are confiscated before they go to the streets,” he explained.

“But most importantly, we talk to them about treatments. Before they can inject themselves in front of our professionals, our nurses and doctors, before they do that, we have social workers talking to them about getting into treatment programs,” Rendell said.

However, local residents interrupted parts of the press conference to say they opposed the plan. One argued that drug users would come to the area for the safe-injection site, bringing with them crime to pay for the drugs and drug dealers looking to make money.

City Councilman Mark Squilla also spoke out and accused Safehouse directors of choosing a facility location under “the cloak of darkness” without consulting the council or residents.

Squilla initially supported the safe injection site initiative in Philadelphia and traveled to Canada with a group of government and Safehouse personnel in 2019. He’s since reversed his position after seeing the conditions in Toronto near the safe injection sites open in the city.

“There’s really no safe way to do this and our goal should be trying to get people treatment,” Squilla told CNN.

US Attorney William M. McSwain said this of his plans to appeal the ruling: “We believe that Safehouse’s proposed activity threatens to institutionalize the scourge of illegal drug use — and all the problems that come with it — in Philadelphia neighborhoods.”

Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney publicly endorsed the controversial concept in early 2018, encouraging the development of “Comprehensive User Engagement Sites.” The walk-in facilities would offer access to sterile needles, the opioid overdose-reversing drug naloxone, wound care and referral to social services.

Goldfein told CNN that the plan is to open next week. The facility will be open four hours per day, Monday through Friday, because of limited funding.

Pennsylvania had the third-highest rate of death due to drug overdose in 2017, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Philadelphia County had the highest rate of drug-related overdose deaths in the state in 2017, according to a Drug Enforcement Administration report.

The city of Philadelphia released a scientific review in 2017 projecting that supervised injection facilities could save lives, but there are no legally sanctioned supervised injection sites in the United States. Most of the report was based on data from a supervised injection facility in Vancouver.

In January 2019, the National Safety Council found that, for the first time on record, the odds of dying from an opioid overdose in the US are now greater than those of dying in a vehicle crash.