PHILADELPHIA _ If Philadelphia opens a safe injection site for drug users, the federal government will take swift and aggressive legal action against it, U.S. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein said this week.
In an interview with WHYY, Rosenstein expressed strong opposition to a site where people in addiction can use drugs under medical supervision, calling them a violation of federal law. "I'm not aware of any valid basis of the argument that you can engage in criminal activity as long as you do it in the presence of someone with a medical license," he said. City leaders should expect legal action as soon as they permit a facility to open, he said.
Philadelphia officials announced in January their intention to permit the opening of a safe injection site, calling it an important aspect of their response to the opioid epidemic, which took 1,217 lives last year _ the highest death rate of any major U.S. city.
The announcement came after city officials visited an established safe injection site in Vancouver and commissioned a report on evidence collected at sites in Canada and Europe. The report concluded that a single site in Philadelphia would save 25 to 75 lives a year and millions of dollars in hospital costs and public funds.
Advocates see safe injection sites as common-sense tools to help people in addiction while also restoring neighborhoods plagued by public drug use. But opponents fear they will just encourage drug abuse, and invite outsiders into already stressed neighborhoods _ themes Rosenstein echoed in the interview.
"If local governments get in the business of facilitating drug use ... they're actually inviting people to bring these illegal drugs into their places of business," Rosenstein said in the interview aired Wednesday. "If you start down that road, you're really going to undermine the deterrent message that I think is so important in order to prevent people from becoming addicted in the future."
People in addiction need treatment, he added, not access to more drugs. Advocates point out, however, that the sites do not provide drugs, just a safe environment where drug users can be revived if they overdose.
Philadelphia Health Commissioner Thomas Farley has said the site would complement the city's other efforts to combat the crisis, like encouraging doctors to prescribe fewer opioids, getting people into treatment quickly and making the reversal drug naloxone widely available.
When facing "an epidemic of historic proportions," Farley has said, it's worth trying all options to save lives. He pointed to needle exchange programs _ widely credited with curbing the AIDS epidemic _ as an analogy. Initially there was backlash to such programs, but as people saw the benefits, they became more accepted, he said.
On Monday, the California Legislature passed a bill legalizing supervised injection sites in the state. Seattle, which is close to opening a safe injection site, set aside $1.3 million in its budget last year to open the facilities. Opponents tried and failed to float a ballot measure that would have banned the sites before they even opened.
An unauthorized safe injection site has been operating in an undisclosed location in the United States since 2014. A handful of cities like San Francisco and New York have announced plans to open sites.
