The Opioid Epidemic: Harm Reduction or Criminalization?

While in a busy waiting room, I lazily listened to the loud television across from me. It was some news about a big drug bust, but quite frankly, I wasn't particularly interested. Not to sound cynical, but it wasn't a shocker that media was celebrating the fact that "defendants in the case were facing lengthy prison sentences, including in some cases, life behind bars." Personally, I've always believed more in rehabilitation over criminalization, so these kinds of stories never really piqued my interest. If anything, I felt a bit disappointed by it. I always felt that we as a society have chosen to eliminate a lot of beautiful potential in favor of a prison cell, despite the fact that more recent documents have highlighted "the importance of child abuse, poverty, early exposure to substance abuse and other risk factors for criminal behavior" and showed that psychotherapy and rehabilitation programs can be extremely beneficial in helping ex-convicts effectively start their lives up again.

As I lounged around at home, I browsed through the news on my phone, skimming through social media until I found something a bit unusual: "Philadelphia's planned supervised injection site does not violate federal drug laws." Alright, well now you've caught my eye. To summarize, a non-profit organization called Safehouse has been given the green-light from a federal judge to establish sites where addicts are able to bring their own drugs and use them where there are medical staff, clean syringes, matches, water, elastic tourniquets, in addition to oxygen and naloxone, used to treat heroin and fentanyl overdoses. Personally, I think that this would make for an incredibly beneficial addition to urban areas with high overdose rates and I believe that if executed correctly and on a large-enough scale, Safehouse could massively minimize the rate of harm surrounding the opioid overdose crisis.

Of course, there's bound to be some disagreement regarding these safe injection sites. William McSwain, a U.S. attorney who's been against the idea from the start, claimed, "We would be engaging in make-believe to say the purpose of Safehouse is to stop people from engaging in drugs." However, I actually don't believe that to necessarily be the goal of Safehouse; the goal of Safehouse is to stop people from engaging in much of the most dangerous aspects of drug use--specifically unsanitary use and overdose. According to this study by the National Center for Biotechnology Information, "an abstinence approach resulted in many consumers either being mandated to intensive treatment such as detox or rehab or dropping out of services altogether." Although abstinence from drugs entirely would be ideal, many addicts would rather risk their health than risk being arrested or having their drugs seized, which is why safe injection sites are so important: they neither glorify nor dissuade drug use, but rather serve only as a means of reducing harm. I'm genuinely inspired by the creators of Safehouse for their decision to move forward with their first site in Philadelphia despite backlash, and I hope that these safe injection sites continue to save lives across the United States.