In case you're wondering, this isn't some new, zany California thing. It's a policy that's been used in big cities throughout the Western world and it both directly saves human lives by preventing overdoses and the spread of disease, but also puts drug abusers into frequent contact with people and services that can help them.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supervised_injection_site

Part of the Supervision package, including Supervised Release for Supervised Petty Theft. It's like Newsom is doing this because he bet someone that he could.

The site in SF is closing because the reality is nothing like the social engineering utopia you describe.

Every service offered has only resulted in increased use, increased homelessness.

Safe injection will increase drug use, destroy communities, increase crime.

The research disagrees with you here. A 2021 review of past studies indicated that on average crime decreased in the areas near a safe injection site and people more often took up addiction treatment. https://sci-hub.st/10.1016/j.amepre.2021.04.017

The paper actually claims crime didn't increase (which is different to decreasing). Some of the studies they surveyed at saw a decrease in crime.

In the US it's obvious to anyone with eyes that cities that encourage/support drug use have a much worse environment (SF, LA, Seattle). Drug users are literally given free rides by neighboring areas into these cities.

I don't think it's the drugs. I think there's societal norms (some of which will get expressed via public policy, many don't) that the people who vote to legalize drugs bring with them that are a necessary perquisite for widespread petty crime.

Even cities known for being "rough" at their peak during the crack epidemic didn't have the brazen broad daylight property theft that plagues certain cities today. There's something about.

Heck, even today I don't think you could just break into a car and start stealing shit in a bad part of St. Louis without exposing yourself to some serious occupational hazards from passers by. It seems like on the west coast (and a couple places out east too) the biggest risk you run is people whipping out their phones and filming you.

If those other areas didn't export their drug users to the big cities, what would the situation be in the big cities? It's like if drinking was only allowed in New Orleans, wouldn't all the drunks and abusers of alcohol go there? That doesn't mean that drinking creates that problem. People take other drugs already.

I'd love to see a study correlating drug tolerance with a worse environment. Until then, this sounds like conjecture. (good point about the crime decreasing vs staying the same, though, I missed that nuance)

Can you elaborate on the "social engineering utopia" I allegedly described? Sounds intriguing.

Don't feed the trolls.

Maybe it’s because I don’t live in California let alone a big city… but it seems completely insane to me that the government would be involved in this at all.

I imagine the government needs to be involved because it's federally illegal. Having the state have your back is handy.

Otherwise, it's both safer for the people doing the injection, they are put in touch with people and tools to quit, and the needles are disposed of rather than being left on the street.

It's a societal benefit to have fewer people with addiction, safer streets, and fewer hospital trips due to overdose/people being dangerous while high. Thus the government makers more sense as the organizer than anything else

Where I live, something like half of all addicts on the street are struggling with mental health issues and self-medicating to cope. If we can address that directly, it would greatly help.

Seems like a rosy distraction away from the key driver of increased overdoses: the opioid epidemic.

As a New Yorker I’m reflexively skeptical about all things California, BUT I really don’t like seeing people shooting up on the streets. There are a lot of knock on problems and we’ve seen that prisons don’t fix this problem. I’m willing to try more of this, seeing the positive-ish results in other places.

I live a few blocks from the safe injection site in SF. People shoot up on the sidewalk literally feet away from the entrance. It’s possible that fewer people shoot up on the street overall, but my personal experience at least is that it’s had no impact.

I'd be interested to know if there are any stats on that. I also feel like SF is going to have a hard time moving the needle on this issue with any one policy change.

Vancouver, Canada has had something called “Insite” and other safe injection sites since 2003. People still shoot up on the streets.

Safe injection has helped to reduce overdose related deaths and to reduce the spread of diseases through dirty needles.

Like anything, it’s not a silver bullet to solve the problem.

I'm fine with small wins, especially if they reduce the burden on emergency services.

The problem city governments have is all the problems caused by laws passed by state and federal politicians who live in 'nice upscale places with cops that run off anyone that looks dodgy' end up being an open in your face problem for cities.

Follow Michael Shellenberger for more insight on California's insanity.

https://twitter.com/ShellenbergerMD

The insane thing is to waste endless money on police and prisons that fail to stop drug abuse while letting people die due to lack of safe injection sites.

It’s entirely possible to both not waste money on police / prisons and to not have injection zones.

It kind of isn’t. This has been studied regarding recidivism and drug use. Rehabilitation and "corrections" are anything but, and are often roadblocks for users trying to get clean, and typically make it more difficult to rejoin society. Due to the insanity of the current system, most people go in and get worse, not better. Harm reduction, on the other hand, cuts out that element, and helps both decriminalize and medicalize the problem. It provides easier routes for people who want to get clean and caps the drug addict to criminal pipeline.

Even if we don't waste money pretending we can "stop" drug use with cops and jails, we still have to pay for the costs associated with overdoses and the spread of disease and a black market. It's cheaper to give someone a clean needle and a test strip than to have them in an ICU bed.

Well sure, ignoring the problem is always an option.