A safe consumption site does not preclude the use of alleys, etc. It is simply one additional option. I have lived and worked in cities with SIFs, and while it seems like a great idea- and is for the small fraction of users who make use- I can assure you it does not eliminate the 'public nuisance' aspect. If if Seattle was to create 10 of these sites, they would still be spread far apart and be subject to hours of operation, vagaries of public transit, limited public transit hours, etc. These are not reasons not to create a safe site, but we need to be realistic about what these can and cannot achieve for our city.

@1 which cities were those?

@3 Sunderland, uk; Porto, Pt; Brussels, Bg- In my experience they do a great job of cleaning up the area 2-3 blocks in each direction for the time they are open. Beyond that you are asking people to take all the risk to score their drugs, move some distance w/ the drugs on them, funnel toward a spot where everyone knows they are holding drugs and puts them at risk of theft or arrest.

You seem to be under the mistaken impression that anti-SCS conservative politicians think keeping drug users alive is a valid goal. Unless it's their own child, they're happy to see every drug user's corpse piled in every alley.

Addiction is an extremely pervasive and controlling disease, and those who are actively using can and will continue to use regardless of how safe the environment is. Creating a safe injection site does not create users, nor is it an act that enables further use- an addict is already fully enabled. It does help reduce public health and sanitation risks, reduce the number of people dying alone and unseen, and increases the potential for outreach. Treatment is a very personal option, and anyone who has experienced addiction can tell you that coerced treatment- even coersion with love and good intentions- is largely unsuccessful. I live in a residential area of Capitol Hill and have to steer myself and my dog around discarded drug paraphernalia almost daily. Will this eliminate that? Sadly, no, and I say sadly because people in addiction are often very removed from concerns their safety and the safety of others. Not because they are horrible people who deserve do die (and a big fuck you to the poster who "jokingly" suggested it)- but because their addiction has shifted to the top of their survival instinct. It is a dark and ugly place to be, but for them and the society that continues to function around them, we need to have a safe option.

To paraphrase Charles Mudede:
But death caused by overdose is really something that should not be solved. Why? Because dead heroin addicts do encourage people to turn to other and more efficient, more rational, more healthy forms of recreation.

@7: The notion of sacrificing some humans for the greater benefit of society rightfully died with the Aztecs, Mayans, and multiple other ancient civilizations that held such beliefs. Human life is still human life, and even the most "hopeless" addict can turn their life back around- provided they live long enough to try. The scare tactics our current drug "education" employs are abysmally ineffective, a fact that has been proven over and over again. Ironically, the one drug that can negatively impact the most systems of the human body- digestive, central nervous, circulatory, endocrine- already has safe consumption sites. They're called bars. If you're having a hard time finding one, just throw a stick. We tend to get very judgmental over what substances some choose over others, while losing sight of the simple fact that literally anyone can become an addict, given the right circumstances, and many of them will fall into it engaging in what society deems as acceptable behavior. Nearly 10% of the US population identifies as an addict. Are you prepared to watch over 20 million people die to achieve some sort of after-school special method of education?

@1 & 4: Sigh...except that none of the countries you list actually have drug consumption rooms. Small detail of pesky fact I know.

Also, just to amplify Ansel's point, the number of injections without fatality numbers in the millions. And it's not just overdose, it's the virtual elimination of HIV and hepatitis C transmission. And contra fucking Mehlman: even if you don't give a rats ass about their lives, you do care about your tax dollars right? DCRs save significant amounts of money.

@11: Your cost/benefit argument is for the birds. The threshold of success for syringe programs or drug consumption rooms is ridiculously low. I ran a syringe program for many, many yrs. I could exchange 1.5 million syringes/yr for 229K. At that time the lifetime cost of care for HIV was 195K (now much, much higher). So if our program prevented 2 infections per yr, we saved you money. If we prevented infection in 10% of our area's injection drug users per yr the net savings was over 29 million. The benefits for DCRs is, if anything, much greater. Even if Seattle spent several million dollars on DCRs, the savings in health care costs would pay for them easily.

Or, you know, maybe fewer people would use illegal drugs in alleyways...

...if illegal drugs were more difficult or expensive to obtain?

...if a higher percentage of addicts got treatment for their addictions?

...if Pioneer Square (and Belltown, and and and) had old-fashioned police foot patrols?

...if local reporters were writing articles trying to reach addicts and help them, rather than advocating for the addiction while avoiding, at all costs, even so much as a glance at the addict?

...if alleyways had photographers for The Stranger pointing cameras at them more often?

Nah, let's first make possession and use legal in a confined area, and possession and sale de facto legal on that confined area's nearby streets and sidewalks. That'll definitely end all the shooting up in the brick-paved alleys.

@9: A part of me wants to jump to the easy bitchy/snarky response, but what you said just further indicates how little the average person knows about drugs and addiction- and why would you? Unless someone chooses a career path in addiction treatment, the only people who do get a full education on the subject are addicts in treatment. As I keep on chiming in on this thread, take a guess at where I got mine (hint: it wasn't a university). Otherwise, what we are taught is an extremely narrow viewpoint heavily laced with fear and social condemnation.
But I am getting off point. A person experiencing an overdose can be at any stage of drug use, from a first-timer to a long-time addict. There is no room whatsoever, in an emergency situation, to stop and ponder what stage they are at, as immediate action must be taken. There is no benefit to people dying. There is no moral learned, there is no one individual whose death is a relief to society. There is an argument to be made about life choices and consequences, but that argument is pretty invalid if the person in question isn't alive to be a part of it. Seattle has a huge sobriety community which attests to the fact that even the worst of the worst can overcome their addiction. You likely know more people than you realize, and would be shocked to hear their stories if they told you. No one looks good in addiction, many people don't "look" remotely salvageable... But they are. Some will tragically die before this can happen, and that should always be seen as a horrible thing. We do ourselves a huge disservice as a society, and as human beings, when we start to pick and choose whose life is worth saving.

@13 Your username (robotslave) suits your attitude. Sure let's keep on doing what has been done for a century expecting a different result, THIS time. The result is never going to change until we, the people, change the way the governments address it.
PROHIBITION DOES NOT WORK! It has never worked in the past, it does not work now, and no matter how it is tweaked it never will work in the future. Criminalizing something that is not a real crime causes more problems than it solves (well actually it doesn't solve any problems in any way, it only makes it all worse), it creates criminal organizations that would have never arisen otherwise, and it causes corruption in law enforcement agencies, in politics at ALL levels of government, and even in the courts (among defense lawyers, prosecutors, and judges).
Get a f'in clue and look at the success in Portugal. https://mic.com/articles/110344/14-years…
FTA:
After the revolution, Portugal gave up its colonies, and colonists and soldiers returned to the country with a variety of drugs. Borders opened up and travel and exchange were made far easier. Located on the westernmost tip of the continent, the country was a natural gateway for trafficking across the continent. Drug use became part of the culture of liberation, and the use of hard narcotics became popular. Eventually, it got out of hand, and drug use became a crisis.

At first, the government responded to it as the United States is all too familiar with: a conservative cultural backlash that vilified drug use and a harsh, punitive set of policies led by the criminal justice system. Throughout the 1980s, Portugal tried this approach, but to no avail: By 1999, nearly 1% of the population was addicted to heroin, and drug-related AIDS deaths in the country were the highest in the European Union, according to the New Yorker.

But by 2001, the country decided to decriminalize possession and use of drugs, and the results have been remarkable.

What's gotten better? In terms of usage rate and health, the data show that Portugal has by no means plunged into a drug crisis.

As this chart from Transform Drug Policy Foundation shows, the proportion of the population that reports having used drugs at some point saw an initial increase after decriminalization, but then a decline: