Safe injection sites save lives — and do not necessarily raise crime.
 | By Neel V. Patel Staff Editor, Opinion |
"Kindness is a very powerful reinforcer," Dr. Nora Volkow recently told the writer Maia Szalavitz. "You can get so much more by being kind with people than by being punitive." |
Volkow, the director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, wants to help America rethink drug addiction not as a crime or a moral and ethical offense, but as a health issue. The 100,000-plus Americans who die every year from drug overdoses should not be treated as criminals — they are sick, and in need of empathetic care and treatment, not punishment. |
This is far from a new concept for Szalavitz, who has spent her career exploring the physiological underpinnings of drug addiction, as well as how harm-reduction approaches are vastly more effective than penalization at curbing drug use and preventing deaths from overdose. At the forefront of harm reduction are overdose prevention centers (also called safe injection or safe consumption sites), where users are allowed to consume drugs under medical supervision. With oversight from doctors and nurses, these centers can save lives. |
And, as Szalavitz writes in her latest guest essay, they do not increase crime in the neighborhoods that host them. |
In November 2021, New York City made the bold move of opening up two overdose prevention centers run by the nonprofit OnPoint, one in East Harlem and one in Washington Heights. They have not been universally welcomed. Community members, public officials and the news media have all expressed fears that opening overdose prevention centers will encourage increased drug use and attract criminal activity. After all, the argument goes, if we think of drug use as a crime, then it only makes sense that unpunished drug use would fuel associated crimes like assaults and theft. |
It turns out these fears may be unfounded. A new study published in JAMA Network Open this week shows that the two neighborhoods home to OnPoint's overdose prevention sites did not experience increased crime rates in the wake of their opening. What they did do was reverse 1,100 overdoses that had the potential to turn fatal, and encouraged more people to seek addiction recovery services. |
Studies like these can be powerful tools of persuasion for committing more resources to harm-reduction initiatives. But there is also a more understated effect that can't be quantified: Centers like these enable communities to see those suffering from addiction as real people who respond to compassion. As Szalavitz writes, "That changes everything, fostering relationships that heal in a way that force and coercion can't." |
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