New York City's mayor Bill de Blasio has announced two safe injection sites located in Washington Heights and East Harlem. They won't be staffed by the city, but instead by a non-profit organization called OnPoint NYC that the city funds.
Safe injection sites have existed in Canada and Europe for decades, and their proponents praise them for creating friendly and non-punitive relations between addicts and the government. According to the NYT, cities like Philadelphia, San Francisco, Boston, and Seattle have all worked toward supervised injection.
The news comes at a crucial moment when street drugs are becoming increasingly dangerous.
Recently, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced that for the first time, more than 100,000 Americans died of a drug overdose in a 12-month period, largely due to the flooding of synthetic opioids like fentanyl into the illicit drug supply.
Vice
