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IPFS News Link • DOJ-Department of justice

Justice Department considers allowing safe havens for addicts where users can legally shoot up:

• https://www.dailymail.co, By ADAM MANNO

The Justice Department says it may be open to allowing safe injection sites - places where people can use heroin and other narcotics with protections against fatal overdoses - a year after winning a major court battle against their opening.

The department said it's 'evaluating' such facilities and talking to regulators about 'appropriate guardrails' in response to questions from the Associated Press.

The position is a drastic change from its stance in the Trump administration, when prosecutors fought vigorously against a plan to open a safe consumption site in Philadelphia. 

The Justice Department won a lawsuit top stop a safe consumption facility from opening in Philadelphia last year. But the Supreme Court declined to take the case in October.

About six weeks later, the first officially authorized safe injection sites opened in New York City in November. The two facilities in East Harlem and Washington Heights - which the city calls 'overdose prevention centers' - have intervened in more than 125 overdoses among more than 640 users.

Meanwhile, photos from a new 'linkage center' aimed at connecting homeless street addicts with drug rehab facilities in San Francisco released last month show why many residents are opposed to having such facilities in their neighborhoods. 

Addicts were pictured sitting on the ground among trash, empty food containers and dirty blankets, as they fumble in with drug paraphernalia in the cold weather. 

Such sites exist in Canada, Australia and Europe and have been discussed for years in New York and some other US cities and states. A few unofficial facilities have operated for some time.

Advocates have hailed them as a way to curb the scourge of overdose deaths. Drawing from the latest available death certificate data, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated that more than 100,000 Americans died of drug overdoses from May 2020 to April 2021.

Critics, however, argue that safe injection sites encourage illegal drug use and burden neighborhoods.

In San Francisco, images taken by DailyMail.com late last month show a woman slumped over in a wheelchair, her pants down around her ankles, preparing to inject a needle into her thigh.


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