City Councilor Ed Flynn is calling for the Council to oppose safe injection sites in Boston that he says would incentivize addicts to shoot up, rather than seek treatment, and worsen the open-air drug market festering at and around Mass and Cass.
Flynn on Wednesday plans to introduce a resolution in opposition to state legislation debated on Beacon Hill last week that would provide a pathway for cities and towns to establish safe injection sites, while providing legal protections for workers, drug users accessing the facilities, government officials and other stakeholders.
“Just weeks ago, I held a hearing in the South End where nearly 200 neighbors shared their lived experiences near Mass and Cass that have today escalated to break-ins and sleeping in homes, cars, and trespassing in backyards,” Flynn said Monday in a statement to the Herald.
“It would be tone-deaf to tell those residents and small businesses that we’re going to today incentivize safe injection over focusing on a recovery campus and treatment-first approach to break the cycle of addiction,” the councilor added.
Flynn emphasized that as a former probation officer at Suffolk Superior Court who helped “hundreds” of probationers get drug treatment programs, he knows that detox and “treatment works.”
“Remaining sober and in recovery is often challenging for many,” Flynn said. “However, we can’t give up on anyone with an alcohol or substance use disorder.”
State lawmakers in favor of safe injection sites argued at last week’s Beacon Hill hearing on the proposed legislation that similar harm reduction measures have led to a decline in fatal opioid-related overdoses in Massachusetts. Overdose deaths fell by 36% last year, to 1,340, compared to 2,104 in 2023.
“There is no doubt that evidence-based harm reduction measures like naloxone distribution and availability, drug checking, and the distribution of sterile needles and other harm reduction supplies and the use of harm reduction practices contributed to this decline,” state Rep. Mindy Domb, co-chair of the Joint Committee on Mental Health, Substance Use and Recovery, said at the hearing.
At the centers, trained health care workers would supervise individuals who use pre-obtained illicit drugs — and they could intervene and prevent fatal overdoses.
The push for safe injection sites comes on the heels of a packed City Council hearing on how Mass and Cass spillover is taxing neighborhoods earlier this month. Tension boiled over when Boston Public Health Commissioner Bisola Ojikutu, a best Wu administration official, said the city hands out more than 80,000 needles per month to drug users.
The needle distribution, Ojikutu said, is aimed at decreasing the risk of HIV exposure. She said the city’s Public Health Commission has identified a cluster of HIV cases in the Boston region.
Most of the more than 200 HIV cases in the region are connected to Mass and Cass drug injection, Ojikutu said, adding that the number would be higher without the city’s harm reduction approach.
Material from the State House News Service was used in this report.
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