In case you missed it, the sometimes completely idiotic Seattle Times Editorial Board got something right last week. The board officially endorsed safe injection spaces—places where people would be allowed to use drugs like heroin while having on-site access to healthcare staff to prevent overdoses. The sites would also offer information about treatment services.

Local activists have been pushing for the sites for months. Recently, a city/county task force endorsed the idea, too, along with significant increases in access to overdose reversal drugs and treatment. The task force recommended two sites in King County, including one located inside Seattle, that would allow not just for injection, but smoking too. The group did not propose any specific locations.

In their editorial, the Times speaks directly to its readers, the region's pearl-clutching homeowners:

Finding locations for these sites would be a huge challenge. But it is important for communities to read research that suggests safe-injection sites don’t increase drug activity, and in fact reduce stray discarded needles.

The most common argument against safe-injection sites is that they enable drug users. In the Puget Sound area, and the U.S., we’ve seen with startling clarity the failures of the prohibition model of drug control.

Pushing users into alleys doesn’t work. It’s time to try a different approach. Give safe-injection sites a try.

Good on them, with one caveat: Injection-only sites are insufficient.

As we've written before, our region does not have a choice about whether it is home to places where people use illegal drugs. Those sites already exist. We do, however, have a choice about whether we will create safe and supervised sites, or simply allow these sites to continue to exist in alleys, parks, and public bathrooms.

Public health experts, King County Executive Dow Constantine, and Seattle Mayor Ed Murray have expressed support for safe consumption spaces. This weekend, Seattle City Council President Tim Burgess—a former cop who is often labeled the council's most conservative member—joined them.

Burgess shared the Times editorial on his Facebook page and wrote: "It's controversial. It's focused on [an] evidence-based harm reduction approach to public health and safety challenges. It requires an admission that our current approach to drug addiction isn't working. But, it is definitely worth a try."