Today marks three months since a task force of experts convened by the City of Seattle and King County recommended a slate of ideas for tackling the region's deadly heroin epidemic, including two safe consumption sites. In their lengthy list of recommendations (which also included more access to addiction treatment), that task force of researchers, law enforcement officers, social service providers, and others asked for a report back from the city and county in 90 days. Today, the city and county are missing that deadline.
On Tuesday night, messages like the one above showed up on buildings across Seattle.
"People who die of an overdose don't recover," read a message on the side of the Museum of Pop Culture. "End the war on drugs!"
"Safe consumption spaces save lives" was projected across the SpringHill Suites downtown, visible from I-5, and "SCSs prevent Hepatitis C, HIV, fatal overdose" appeared on the side of the Washington State Convention Center.
The messages were part of a guerilla advocacy campaign from local activists, medical professionals, and lawyers who want the region to become home to the nation's first safe consumption spaces, at which people could inject or smoke drugs under medical supervision to help prevent deadly overdoses. We wrote more here about why this proposal is so crucial.
It's true that local politicians have gotten on board with the idea of safe consumption site. But, as today's missed deadline reminds, they have yet to offer specifics about where or when they might actually open in Puget Sound.
In the past, both King County Executive Dow Constantine and Seattle Mayor Ed Murray have offered tacit support for safe consumption spaces, which are controversial and will only become more controversial when the time comes to actually locate them in specific neighborhoods. Yet their administrations are proving slow to come up with the concrete details of how, where, and when they will actually create these spaces, which would flout federal drug laws and could be the first of their kind in the United States. (The mayor of Ithaca, New York, is also advocating for a safe injection site in his city. The notable difference between consumption sites and injection sites is that consumption sites also allow smoking.) Spokespeople in both Murray's and Constantine's offices would say only that they're still working on their responses.
In an email to task force members Monday, co-chairs Brad Finegood and Jeff Duchin said the city and county are "still committed to providing a response but scheduling has been challenging—we hope to have news about this very soon."
Kris Nyrop, an advocate for safe consumption spaces and national support director for the diversion program LEAD at the Public Defenders Association, tells The Stranger, "This is an important effort and one that needs to be done well. Taking the necessary time to do that make sense."
Even as the city and county blow the deadline set by the task force, momentum in support of safe consumption sites has continued to grow. Earlier this year, King County Sheriff John Urquhart said his deputies would not arrest people entering or leaving a safe consumption space. Community groups and city council members have begun offering up their own neighborhoods as potential sites: The Capitol Hill Community Council has endorsed the idea, Seattle City Council member Debora Juarez has floated the idea of allowing one of the sites in her North Seattle district, and her colleague Sally Bagshaw, who represents downtown, has suggested Belltown and Lake City. Healthcare workers recnetly staged a die-in supporting safe consumption spaces. Then this week, these light projections showed up.
"Years ago we stepped out of the shadows and provided needle exchange to curb the HIV epidemic," HIV activist Tony Radovich said in a statement. "We can and must take this logical step forward to stop overdoses, connect people to care, and meet people where they are at.”
