Mayor Svante Myrick
The mayor of
Ithaca wants his city in upstate New York to host the nation's first supervised
injection facility, enabling heroin users to shoot illegal drugs into their
bodies under the care of a nurse without getting arrested by police.
Canada, Europe and Australia are working to reduce overdose deaths with
these facilities, but in the United States, even the idea of creating a
supervised injection site faces significant legal and political challenges.
That has to change and
quickly, said Ithaca Mayor Svante Myrick.
"My father was a drug addict. He split from the family when I was
5, 6 years old," the mayor, now 28, explained in an Associated Press
interview. "I have watched for 20 years this system that just doesn't
work. We can't wait anymore for the federal government. We have people shooting
up in alleys. In bathroom stalls. And too many of them are dying."
Myrick said he will ask New York's Health Department to declare the
heroin epidemic a state health crisis, which he said would enable his city to
proceed without involving the state legislature. The mayor described his
proposal to the AP ahead of a formal announcement planned for Wednesday.
Once dismissed as a radical idea, injection sites are increasingly being
discussed in response to huge increases in overdose deaths nationwide. In New
York state, overdose deaths involving heroin and other opiates shot from 186 in
2003 to 914 in 2012.
Ithaca alone had three fatal overdoses and 13 non-fatal overdoses in a
three-week span in 2014, prompting city officials to begin looking at
alternatives to simply jailing addicts. The city of 30,000, which hosts Cornell
University and Ithaca College, is one of New York's most liberal communities
and is a prime candidate for new approaches, Myrick said.
Nurses or physicians could quickly administer an antidote if and when a
user overdoses, and addicts also could get clean syringes and be directed to
treatment and recovery programs, according to the mayor, who envisions a
holistic approach that deals with addiction more like a public health issue
than a criminal justice problem.
Myrick crafted his plan in collaboration with police and prosecutors,
overcoming initially strong opposition from the elected district attorney, Gwen
Wilkinson.
"What brought me around was the realization that this wouldn't make
it more likely that people will use drugs," Wilkinson said. "What it
would do is make it less likely that people will die in restaurant
bathrooms."
Police Chief John Barber is not totally convinced. He "firmly"
supports other parts of the plan, but said "I am wary of supervised
injection sites."