(Lots of great links in this)
Philadelphia bans supervised injection sites – evidence suggests keeping drug users on the street could do more harm than good.
this decision has focused on protecting neighborhoods where drug activity happens in parks and on the streets, ample evidence suggests that banning supervised injection sites may instead jeopardize the people and communities the policy was intended to protect.
Synøve Nygaard Andersen
Yes, I'm very familiar.
And I am signed up to go through training. Some time in late N November.
See:
Oh, fantastic! I must have missed that post.
Thank you so much for signing up to do such important work.
What a gift and light to the world.
I hope you have the wellness tools on hand to take care of yourself while taking on such a task, too.
@corlin
The thing is, there was a safe injection site operating in Philadelphia, and none of the neighbors knew it -- not a nuisance at all. But there are so many for-profit scammers involved in addiction treatment, if it were legal, they'd be setting up poorly-run safe injection sites, too. They really need to get a control on the scammers so people can be more confident about how the injection sites would be run.
Absolutely agree.
Strong regulation and oversight are a must.
Not something the US is very good at in the health field.
@corlin
Housing first!
Safe injection sites first!
We have so many studies illustrating the benefits of this approach. We *know* it's mere repulsion at the idea of "handouts to those who made bad choices" keeping us from building better communities.
I'm not sure if you're a podcast person, but this episode, on a helpline for people to call so they don't inject alone, was *such* a clear, humanizing example of how to help both in the now, and in the longterm.
#Podcasts
https://www.thisamericanlife.org/809/transcript