Denver City Council Approves Safe 'Injection Site' For Drug Users

DENVER, CO – Denver's City Council voted Monday to approve a pilot program to provide a supervised site for illegal drug users to inject. The bill was sponsored by Councilman Albus Brooks.

More than 200 people died of injected drug overdoses in Denver last year, and more than 1,000 died of opioid overdoses in the state of Colorado. Resources for metro-Denver's most vulnerable addicts have been reduced after the closing of Thornton-based safety-net operation Arapahoe House, which served more than 5,000 of the poorest patients with substance abuse problems in 13 metro-Denver locations. It's unclear where those patients have gone for treatment, and whether more deaths and serious medical events have resulted from the closing of the organization.

Trained medical staff at the proposed "safe injection site" would be on-hand with naxilone for overdoses and would be able to refer drug abusers to treatment resources.

"This ordinance isn’t about addicts. This is about our neighbors," Brooks posted on his Facebook page. " This is about our neighbors experiencing addiction. When we see people as our neighbors, we see their stories deeply connected to ours. And that is how we save lives. That is why we are here tonight."

Council member Kevin Flynn was the lone vote against the pilot program. "It’s not the path I think the city ought to be taking," Flynn said, as reported on Colorado Public Radio. "To establish a designated area where dangerous illegal drugs, heroin, can be consumed."

The program would still need to be approved by the Colorado state legislature.

State Senator-elect Brittany Pettersen, who championed opioid recovery bills in the legislature as a state representative, felt that her GOP colleagues voted against her bills because of politics. She will likely re-present these bills now that the Democrats have a trifecta in the state legislature and governor's office.

Image via Shutterstock

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