San Francisco will have two sites open by August. Whhhhy do they get all the good stuff first in California? We could have led on an issue! stamps foot

Also, why was this message about supervised injections delivered via a woman in raccoon cosplay?

@1 Tell that to Jerry Garcia...

YestoSCS

@1:

You hear a lot of shit - doesn't mean most of it is true...

@1: Regardless, unless and until people are ready for and able to get into such a facility, supervised consumption spaces will help keep them alive and connected to people who can help. SCS's are not intended to be alternatives to drug rehabilitation centers; they are alternatives to less-safe consumption spaces like parks, alleys, and public restrooms.

Megan, it looks like you overdosed on rims for your glasses.

Ease up. A lot of people really care and are worried about you.

In 1961, from a skyscraper on Seattle's Fourth Avenue, I watched JFK go by in his convertible, waving and welcomed by confetti and the crowd's cheers. In 2017, from almost the same spot, one glimpsed on Fourth Avenue a poor guy tying off his arm and shooting up on the sidewalk as crowds walked right by him.

@14:

In that case, perhaps you should re-read your @1...

@14: Wherever deaths due to accidental overdose happen, SCS's are an alternative to them. They are not meant as an alternative to rehabilitation centers.

You seem to assert that someone in danger of accidental overdose would not use an SCS if it was available to him or her. What makes you think that person would use a drug rehabilitation center? Maybe you think we could and should force people into such centers. We've tried that. Those are called jails.

Overdose deaths in Vancouver, B.C. actually increased greatly after their safe injection site opened. Drug users may have not been overdosing within the injection site, but they're just overdosing elsewhere. So if hear proponents of these sites want to convince Seattleites that safe injection sites will help get people into treatment and ultimately decrease drug abuse, they'd better come up with some facts.

Jail is not a solution but a punishment for being sick.

If you are not in agreement with these sites what is your humane solution?

There are too many broken hearts that have lost loved ones. Its worth a serious try. This is a deadly epidemic and the pain is too great.

Safe injection sites are a no-brainer for treating a drug epidemic. It's shameful to know my city doesn't have them.

@18:

Bingo! The suggestion that a person who is hooked is going to do a car prowl “here” for quick cash, take the stolen goods “there” for a sale, make their drug buy over “there” and then make another trip to a purported shooting gallery yet somewhere else is beyond credulity. That is unless the real goal is start with one and then put them everywhere. How about we start we funding rehab on demand and knock it off with the enabling?

Abstinence based treatment for opiate users means they're 30 times more likely to die from an overdose. They would be safer continuing to use. Since 80% of treatment centers in the US are abstinence based, it's obvious rehab isn't the best choice for opiate users. Research has found rates of complex trauma as high as 90% in injection drug using populations. This mean the most common factor shared by people who inject drugs is their status as survivors of sexual and physical abuse and trauma. People would do well to remember this fact when they play the shame game, writing the horrible and callous things the do about drug users. Wake up and investigate the world around you rather than letting yourselves be spoon-fed the next group of people who you're supposed to hate and blame as the source of societies many ills.

@19: Fatal overdoses in Vancouver increased after InSite opened because drug use increased, because those drugs remain unregulated and thus artificially dangerous and unpredictable, and because Fentanyl entered the scene.

InSite has been so clearly successful that Canadians are now opening more safe consumption sites in Vancouver and in other cities.

16: The problem is, a lack of safe injection sites almost never leads to people going to rehab. Nobody's AGAINST rehab. Nobody's against the idea of helping people battle their addictions(and it's always a battle, it can never be a total victory-that's why they call it "recovery", not "cure").

Rehab may not always be an option. For some people, it's economically unviable/ As I understand it, the effective rehab centers charge thousands of dollars...and if you're an addict, you've probably spent all your money on your addiction.

The people going to safe injection sites are people who'd be using heroin or other injectibles no matter what. The point of the safe sites is simply to do what CAN be done in that situation to keep those people alive. Is that such a horrible thing?

26. Absolutely. The observation made by poster #19 is a classic example of "correlation is not causation".

Sounds great if you ignore the HUGE increase in OD deaths in Vancouver, the only city for which we have data on SCSs. I know you want to seem all caring and compassionate, but you need to pull your head out of your ass and actually think about problems like this.

28 that's correlation, not causation.