"This is going to save some people's lives"

October 3, 2019 4:57 PM

A federal judge has ruled that Safehouse, a proposed safe injection facility in Philadelphia, does not violate section 856 of the US Controlled Substance Act. Although the site still faces legal hurdles, the ruling sets a precedent that could pave the way for sites in San Francisco, Seattle, and several other US cities.

The decision comes following a year where Philadelphia lost 1,116 people to overdoses, and in the midst of a hepatitis A outbreak concentrated among IV drug users in the Kensington neighborhood.

posted by I am a Sock, I am an Island (14 comments total)

Let's go, Seattle!
posted by The corpse in the library at 5:10 PM on October 3, 2019 [10 favorites]

I once cornered a Republican on why they oppose safe injection facilities. We got to the point where they finally admitted that it boiled down to "I don't want to pay money to help bad people."
posted by benzenedream at 5:25 PM on October 3, 2019 [8 favorites]

Here's the ruling.
posted by teraflop at 5:25 PM on October 3, 2019

Harm reduction now please.
posted by nikaspark at 5:27 PM on October 3, 2019 [9 favorites]

Even if a person insists on the use of a strict utilitarian analysis, it's irrational to oppose harm reduction, including safe injection sites and other sometimes controversial methods. The insistent asshole, like each and every one of us, will either pay a little now or pay a lot more later. We can either do it the easy way or the hard way. Last time, the assholes successfully won the argument and we got the hard way. It did not turn out well.

Point being, all blanket opposition to harm reduction is provably rooted in an antisocial desire to punish and subjugate, usually out of a need to feel a smug sense of superiority over others that hasn't been satisfied in some other way, like making comments on the Internet.
posted by wierdo at 7:04 PM on October 3, 2019 [10 favorites]

5-4 reversal coming in 3, 2...

as for Republicans, they believe government's main job is to hurt people, not help them.
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 7:20 PM on October 3, 2019 [3 favorites]

This Inquirer article On librarians and Narcan was a while ago but really speaks to the need for this in Philly.
posted by supercres at 7:51 PM on October 3, 2019 [1 favorite]

On the ruling as it applies to Seattle

Unfortunately, it's "not much", because of the different federal circuits involved.
posted by vibratory manner of working at 12:59 AM on October 4, 2019 [1 favorite]

When Philly cleared the encampment of street people and drug users from Kensington, it coincided with a pretty significant boom in that population, and it just pushed them into different neighborhoods. Where I was living - a middle-class neighborhood several miles away - suddenly saw an influx: a lot of new people on the curb, holding the store door open asking for change, or living in campers under the highway or tents in the bushes.

This ruling is extremely welcome and I hope it can go forward. Hard to think of more legal hurdles when over a thousand people in Philly are dying of ODs each year.
posted by entropone at 5:26 AM on October 4, 2019 [1 favorite]

Don't start to celebrate just yet. The religious police, racist stupid white people, and the idiots in Pennsyltucky haven't had their tantrums yet.

But I hope this does go through. What has happened in Kensington and starting to happen in other areas is heartbreaking.
posted by james33 at 6:49 AM on October 4, 2019

Even if a person insists on the use of a strict utilitarian analysis, it's irrational to oppose harm reduction, including safe injection sites and other sometimes controversial methods.

Addicts just dying at relatively young ages is relatively inexpensive. That's what they want.
posted by praemunire at 8:24 AM on October 4, 2019 [4 favorites]

In the Puritan brain:
Appropriate punishment for sex : children, STDs, and death in childbirth
Appropriate punishment for drugs : addiction, poverty, jail, death*
* = White relatives on pain pills excepted
posted by benzenedream at 9:34 AM on October 4, 2019 [2 favorites]

Sooo close to getting quoted in an article posted to Metafilter. Maybe I'll hit that goal when we open them here.
posted by gingerbeer at 4:49 PM on October 5, 2019

I did write one of the items linked in this post. Not sure that counts for my personal goal of a quote getting posted here, though.
posted by gingerbeer at 4:50 PM on October 5, 2019