CHICAGO _ In the year he lived in an abandoned building in Humboldt Park, David Cole says he came to the aid of at least six people overdosing from drugs. And maybe saved their lives.
One time, a woman took cocaine and heroin and "just kind of laid back," said Cole, 57, a user himself. "I thought she was chilling, so I was reading a book. And I look over and I said, 'Whoa, her lips are blue.'
"I calmly took the stuff out and gave her a shot," he said, referring to naloxone, a medication that can rapidly reverse an opioid overdose. "She came through."
Cole left the building about a year ago and moved to a long-standing homeless camp under the Kennedy Expressway viaduct at Belmont and Kedzie avenues. Since then, at least two people passing by were given naloxone after overdosing, he said.
In abandoned buildings, encampments, vacant lots and other secluded areas throughout the city, drug users have found spaces where they can be watched over while using drugs. This makeshift network _ hundreds of places, recovery workers estimate _ has grown as groups have distributed naloxone more widely over the last two decades.
But rescues are a matter of chance, of being in the right place at the right time.
Community groups and some public officials, including Cook County's top prosecutor, believe it's time for Chicago to set up its own safe sites: Places where people can legally use drugs under medical supervision, where staff is on hand to administer naloxone and where medical checkups, referrals to housing and other services are offered.
Called safe injection sites or overdose prevention centers, they have operated for years in Europe and Canada, where studies have found sizable reductions in the number of fatal overdoses.
No sites exist in the United States, despite an opioid epidemic that continues to grow. In Chicago, there have been more than 3,400 opioid-related deaths since 2015. Despite the increasing access to naloxone, the number of fatal overdoses each year in the city has climbed 100% from 2015 to 2018. In Cook County last year, more than twice as many people died from opioid overdoses than from gun violence.
While the American Medical Association has come out in support of safe sites, polls show public support remains low. A 2018 survey by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health found only 29% of respondents supported such sites.
Chicago's tolerance may be tested soon. In June, a group including Cook County State's Attorney Kim Foxx flew to Toronto to visit sites there. Then in July, Foxx and more than 60 other law enforcement officials across the country signed a legal brief in support of a nonprofit in Philadelphia that hopes to open the first site in the United States but is battling the federal government in court.
While Foxx told the Chicago Tribune she thinks Chicago urgently needs safe consumption sites, no solid plans have surfaced. "I would love to be able to see a site in a place where the community welcomed it ... like yesterday," she said. But before a site can open, "you need the collective to come together and say that we need this."
Mayor Lori Lightfoot declined to take a position on safe consumption sites during her election campaign and still won't say whether she supports them. In a statement, her press secretary said, "Chicago has been following the national conversation about 'safe use sites' closely. Currently, we prioritize spending on harm reduction approaches including syringe exchange and naloxone distribution, and we will continue to gather information about this emerging practice."
Besides Philadelphia, efforts are underway to open sites in New York City, Boston and San Francisco. Recovery workers say Chicago can't wait any longer.
Greg Scott, a member of the Chicago Recovery Alliance, said users he's encountered have been "adamantly advocating for the establishment of safer consumption sites" for almost two decades. "I've literally had a thousand conversations with a thousand different people about their desire to have a space where they can use their substances and not die."
