Pierce County prepares to ban safe-injection sites before anyone suggests them

Pierce County Council members are poised to ban something no one is proposing: so-called safe-injection sites for drug users.

The resolution, sponsored by council members Jim McCune and Pam Roach, would bar the establishment of such sites in unincorporated areas. It’s slated for an initial public hearing Monday at the council’s Rules and Operations Committee.

Safe-injection sites aim at users of heroin and other drugs. In theory, they provide a safe, supervised place for users to obtain clean needles. Trained personnel oversee the injections and administer anti-overdose drugs such as naloxone in the event of an emergency.

The sites are controversial, and they don’t exist in the United States — yet. The city of Vancouver, British Columbia, established a pair of sites in 2003.

More recently the cities of Philadelphia and San Francisco have proposed them. Last year, King County took steps to allow two such sites in unincorporated areas, though they haven’t been established, and public opposition to them has been fierce.

In Pierce County and Tacoma, no such sites have been proposed.

Why spend time banning something that doesn’t exist and hasn’t been suggested?

“It’s preemptive,” Roach said. “Let’s make sure nobody even starts to think about it. As soon as people want to do it, then you’re on the defense.”

McCune, who often speaks about drug use and illegal activity in the largely rural district he represents, also said the ban is a preventive measure. He favors treatment for people struggling with addiction, but he thinks safe-injection sites enable users rather than help them.

“It’s not a safe-injection site,” he said. “I think it’s an unsafe-injection site. It’s the wrong message to children and our society. I believe (addicts) need to get off heroin. Instead of allowing the felons to keep shooting up, take them into captivity and get them into treatment — long-term, not short-term.”

The proposed ban arrives in the midst of a broader effort by the county to combat the opioid epidemic and the increasing number of overdose deaths. That figure rose to 81 in Pierce County in 2016, and 694 statewide, according to numbers from the state Department of Health. Last year, Roach spearheaded an effort to declare an opioid crisis in Pierce County.

Councilman Derek Young has spent the past year working with a countywide opioid task force. More recently, Young and Tacoma City Councilman Conor McCarthy convened an opioid summit held at the University of Washington Tacoma, where leaders and experts discussed the problem at length.

Young said he intends to support the ban on safe-injection sites, but he underlined the idea that no one is trying to establish them locally.

“I don’t want there to be confusion that there’s some proposal on the table,” he said. “We are 100 percent in agreement that this isn’t something that will be happening here.”

The resolution starts a journey toward a ban that could take a month or two. In essence, the county has to define safe-injection sites before it can ban them. The process requires a procedural side trip through the Planning and Public Works Department and approval by the county’s Planning Commission.

McCune thinks those steps could be complete by April or May, followed by a council vote with a clear majority, reflecting public sentiment.

“I have enough votes to pass it,” he said. “If you had a countywide vote, I would think it would pass pretty heavily countywide.”

The resolution also refers to a stealth provision in the biennial budget passed by the council last year. The language ties strings to the county’s share of funding for the Tacoma-Pierce County Health Department. If the agency tries to establish safe-injection sites in unincorporated areas, it forfeits roughly $2.4 million in general funding.

Dr. Anthony Chen, director of the health department, isn’t worried about losing funding since his agency isn’t trying to to create safe-injection sites.

“It’s not an area that we are focused on,” he said. “No one’s talking about that right now. We are focused really on the strategies that serve the needs of our community. There’s a whole slew of things that we are working on across many sectors.”

The rationale for safe-injection sites holds that they reduce overdose deaths and the spread of infection such as HIV and hepatitis C. A recent article by German R. Lopez, who covers drug policy and public health for Vox, cites European studies that conclude safe-injection sites benefit public health as a whole.

Whatever the science says, political reality remains. King County’s venture into safe-injection sites caused an uproar last year, prompting multiple cities to ban them, including Federal Way. Opponents drafted an initiative to force a countywide vote, but it was blocked in court.

Snohomish County Council members passed a temporary moratorium on safe-injection sites last year and followed up Wednesday with a permanent ban. Some of the legal mechanisms from the Snohomish effort served as reference material for Pierce County’s resolution.

McCune has visited homeless encampments in his district and spoken to residents, some of whom admit their long-term drug use.

“They don’t tell you they’re shooting up,” he said. “It’s a long conversation to get to that point. You’ve got to work into the subject. They finally break down a little bit. They seem like most of them want some kind of treatment.”

McCune believes a mixture of law enforcement and diversionary long-term treatment is the best approach to solving the crisis. Public records show he has received a number of comments from constituents regarding safe-injection sites. The message is loud:

“By all means do everything possible not to allow the so-called safe injection sites. I do not want to become the cesspool like Seattle for heroin,” one Graham resident wrote. Other messages strike the same tone.

The debate over the opioid epidemic tends to divide people into camps: those who favor less-punitive responses with an emphasis on treatment and those who lean toward tougher consequences for drug use. President Donald Trump is poised to announce plans to combat the opioid epidemic that include a potential death penalty for convicted drug dealers. The U.S. Department of Justice recently suggested that safe-injection sites are illegal under federal law.

Roach, the county councilwoman, has contended with addiction issues in her own family. Like McCune, she accepts the idea that addiction is a disease, not a moral failure explained solely by bad decisions.

“There is agency, and once you get addicted there isn’t,” she said. “The situation changes. They do not have the free agency anymore. They are disabled.”

Young knows studies showing the benefits of safe-injection sites are out there, but he also knows local residents perceive them as enabling rather than preventing drug use, and he thinks the legal issues are problematic.

His policy preferences lean toward treatment rather than punishment, prevention rather than moralizing — and he likes to point to the fiscal math regarding the treatment-driven approach.

“If you see it as moral failure, just think of it as the money saved,” he said.

This story was originally published March 16, 2018 at 11:00 AM with the headline "Pierce County prepares to ban safe-injection sites before anyone suggests them."