Illinois Senate Bill 78 is coming up for deliberation in the Illinois Senate, and I wanted to write you to inform you of the implications of the bill, as seen from the results of previous facilities of the same sort in other parts of the county and continent.
Bill 78 would allow for Overdose Prevention Sites to be established. In some places, they are called Safe Consumption Sites. These facilities are part of a Harm Reduction Initiative to get intravenous drug users off the street and into a place where they can have access to clean and safe materials for using, such as clean needles and clean water, and people around to monitor them and administer oxygen or naloxone in the event of an overdose. These facilities would be placed in areas where there is already a high rate of drug use. The purpose of these facilities is not only to help people with drug addictions, but also to help the communities where they live. By providing clean needles and safe disposal, safe consumption sites reduce the amount of used needles found littered in high-traffic areas. The provision of clean needles would reduce the number of HIV transmissions, which costs the state over $300,000 per diagnosis, and reduce Hepatitis C transmissions, which costs over $30,000 per diagnosis. There hasn’t been a single overdose death within a OPS facility. It would also serve as a resource center for people who are seeking treatment, and they would provide referrals to local treatment centers.
Many people are, understandably, going to be wary of building such a facility where we would be allowing drug users to use their substances without fear of consequence. Also, surely people don’t want these facilities being built in their communities and attracting drug abusers to the area. In reference to the first objection, while they would be allowing people to use without (as much) fear of death or of legal consequence, it’s been proven that those consequences don’t stop people who are already addicted from using a substance. Also, these facilities have shown an increase in addicts seeking treatment and recovery. As for the second objection, these facilities won’t be built in areas that don’t already have a serious problem with drug use. They would be taking the people and the related litter off the streets, making them safer, and cleaner, and providing resources to addicts to help them find recovery. A recent case study showed that 75% of addicts and alcoholics do eventually find recovery, they just have to live long enough to get there.
For more information, consider a review of the recent history of drug policy available without cost on the internet in the paper by Ximene Rego and associates from 2021:
https://substanceabusepolicy.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13011-021-00394-7
And see this article from 2021 hosted on a website of an advocacy group that is trying to encourage more places to follow the Portuguese model:
https://transformdrugs.org/blog/drug-decriminalisation-in-portugal-setting-the-record-straight
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