LATEST

Are Safe Use Heroin Sites a Good Idea?

King County’s Heroin and Prescription Opiate Addiction Task Force has recommended testing two medically supervised sites where people can safely inject and smoke drugs. Validation of hard drug use or necessary step to combat an epidemic?

Untitled 1 ju1gaq

Shutterstock/Praisaeng

“Opiate use is a medical condition, not a criminal justice problem. These sites are not primarily about giving people a place to inject—though that’s an important part of what they do to reverse overdoses—but more importantly giving them a doorway to access treatment.” 

–Dr. Jeffrey S. Duchin, cochair, Heroin and Prescription Opiate Addiction Task Force

“Answers like Let’s move to the Amsterdam model and legalize all drugs—I think that’ll be a complete failure in our county. We cannot allow local governments to get into the illegal drug business.”  

–Mark Miloscia, Washington state senator, Republican, 30th District

“We’ve been beating our heads against the wall by throwing people in jail for decades now, so we need to be more creative. There’s a big jump between active use and admission to treatment. And that’s the gap that the safe injection facility has the potential to meet.” 

–Molly Carney, executive director, Evergreen Treatment Services

Published in the 100 Best Restaurants issue of Seattle Met.











Stefan Milne
Stefan Milne
Stefan Milne is the arts and culture editor for Seattle Met. He’s a Washington native and earned an M.A. in English from Central Washington University. He’s published journalism, fiction, and poetry in Gargoyle Magazine, The Stranger, and others. You can likely find him reading or cooking vegetables from his garden.