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Somerville, Fenway Health ready a safe-injection site
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A safe controlled environment
Their heart is in the right place but It will attract the dealers and crime in my opinion.
Unless they are giving out free drugs.
Attracting dealers to a
Attracting dealers to a particular location isn't the same thing as a net increase in dealers. Given safe injection sites' proven track record of reducing deaths their existence is a net positive.
OK....
How, exactly? Be specific.
Drug users buy drugs
Drug dealers sell drugs, buying drugs on the street is illegal, some drug users commit crimes to get money to buy drugs.
Methadone Mile is a prime example of drug use attracting crime.
I don't think that's likely to be a condition of the facility.
Considering it'd likely be pretty closely patrolled/monitored by police, it'd seem dealing drugs outside of the facility wouldn't be the most lucrative business model, no?
I agree it won't be a condition of the facility
Just like the methadone clinic has no condition of some heroin users congregating or buying drugs and commiting crimes, it just happens.
Doubtful
You think the Somerville Police will patrol and monitor the safe injection site more closely than the BPD patrols and monitors Methadone Mile? That would be interesting to see judging by the heavy police presence in New Market. At least it will, hopefully, disperse the crowd away from the South End and Roxbury into other parts of town, which I'm all in favor of. And maybe it will give the BPD a break in dealing with it.
Take me out to the ball game,
Take me out to the ball game,
Take me out to get high;
Buy me some needles, and Crack, and Jack,
I don't care if I never get back.
Let me rot, rot, rot for the whole day,
If I don't live, it's a shame.
For it's one, two, three strikes, I'm out,
At the old buzz game.
I learned an interesting fact
I learned an interesting fact about safe injection sites recently. The death rate is 0%. Nobody has ever died of an overdose in a safe injection site. They also significantly decrease the rates of HIV and Hepatitis C infections and people are much more likely to enter rehab via safe injection sites. If you actually care about treating the addiction crisis as a public health matter, then these facilities are major piece to that puzzle.
The people who oppose these
The people who oppose these don’t care about intravenous drug users, they care about the value of the land they bought in the 70’s for tens of thousands of dollars and nothing else.
What's the recovery rate?
What percentage are able to use the facility to end their addition? Any negative effects like increase drug trafficking or crime nearby?
I haven't read one way or another.
Apples and oranges and bananas
These are great questions.
The answer to the first question doesn't matter; all people deserve to be safe and alive, and these sites drastically reduce overdoses, which is their intended purpose. Sure, treatment and recovery are great too, and we should also support programs with that aim, but one needs to be alive in order to get into recovery.
I don't have a source immediately at hand for the second, but based on my knowledge of human behavior and leadership experience in various healthcare programs, it differs drastically depending on many aspects of how the program is run. In that sense, it's similar to outpatient treatment programs in that some of them are notorious spots to find dealers, buyers, fights, and general obnoxiousness, while others of them are run in such a way that none of the neighbors even know anything other than some sort of office is located there.
Unfortunately...
Unfortunately, many don't seem to care about treating it as a public health matter because it doesn't directly affect them other than having to encounter the undesirables, and they're not interested in solutions that challenge their notion that punishing people is somehow going to end their addiction. No amount of evidence is enough. They want their pound of flesh, and they think it's going to change something. It never has. All it's done so far is kill people.
Detractors tend to confuse efforts to end addiction with efforts to prevent it. You might keep someone from picking up for the first time by scaring them off with severe punishment (probably not) but take it from the guy who sends people to treatment from the ER - the number of people who stop using because they're afraid of arrest is... zero in my large sample.
I think what you're missing
is that a lot of the critics of these kinds of initiatives would really prefer that people die. They just aren't willing to come out and say it.
Drive down Albany street in
Drive down Albany street in Boston. there is a lot of fishing going on in the perfect storm of opioid endemic. Ask who gets the grants and cashes a 503 c3 paycheck. look up the salaries of the CEO's of the " helping " non profits. I give the Methadone Clinics all the credit. they are for profit corporations, no B.S. there.
This is great.
Proven to work in Europe there are hardly any of these in the US, another chance to lead the nation.
How do we ensure that if they
How do we ensure that if they put it in Davis or east Somerville it doesn’t create a place for dealers and other people to loiter all day?
Uh-oh!!
I can see Billy Tauro whipping up the townies over this one!
This is cool
*Somewhere* needs to do this experiment and study the outcomes. I'm happy for it to be my own town, even if it ends up being close by.
A safe injection site should mean fewer deaths, but also fewer police calls, hospital transports, and infections—I wouldn't be surprised if it would actually end up being a net cost savings to the area, if that's all one cared about. (Not sure how that actually shakes out to city, state, and federal programs, but if these work out, I would hope they'd end up spread out across a large number of cities and getting state and federal reimbursement.)
Probably fewer needles in playgrounds, too.
I’ve been a patient of Fenway
I’ve been a patient of Fenway Health for 16 years and now I’m changing my doctors office.. This is disgusting and disturbing allowing illegal drugs to be used and pretty much keeping these people addicted .. safe sites are no where near helping those with drug addiction it’s dong the exact opposite.. bye Fenway Health after 16 years I’d rather not continue keeping my health and life in the care of your facility
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamsterdam
In theory and in a TV show,this may sound great but it is not.