In Connecticut's last legislative session, language to establish overdose prevention centers in the state was stripped out of a bill before it got to a final vote in the House. Lawmakers and advocates say it’ll be back next year.
WSHU’s Ebong Udoma spoke with CT Mirror’s Katy Golvala to discuss her article written with Laura Tillman, “Lamont nixed overdose prevention centers, but advocates fight on,” as part of the collaborative podcast Long Story Short. Read Katy and Laura’s story here.
WSHU: Hello, Katy. Could you start by describing an overdose prevention center and what prompted you and your colleague, Laura Tillman, to be interested in telling the story of how a proposal for an OPC in Connecticut was derailed in the state house after winning approval in the Senate?
KG: Yeah. Thanks for having me. So, an overdose prevention center is a physical space that is a resource for people who use drugs, and so it can contain a lot of things, as advocates will tell you. Oftentimes, they contain a space for people to just sit and get out of the cold. Maybe they can get a cup of coffee, access laundry, access showers, bathrooms, and medical care. But the most controversial piece of it is that they include safe use areas, so areas where people can bring illegal drugs that they have obtained and use them under the supervision of trained staff who have access to oxygen, Naloxone, and tools that would help them prevent and reverse overdoses. And this bill came up in Connecticut for the second time. The first time it came up was in 2023 to establish overdose prevention centers that include all of those other resources and areas where people can safely use under supervision.
WSHU: That's a very controversial part of this, allowing people to use drugs in these centers.
KG: Yes, the safe use element is controversial. I think all of the other elements, people generally agree that all of those are tools that should be used in the fight against overdoses. But what I will say is, you know, this is a relatively new concept in the United States. There is one center in Rhode Island and two in New York City, but it is widely used worldwide. There are over 100 around the world, with over 30 in Canada. And we spoke to people on the ground floor, establishing them in Canada, as well as people who were part of the early processes for Rhode Island and New York. And you know what we found was interesting. They start off controversial with the public, which is definitely what we heard. But if the right kind of community outreach is done if you know the evidence is presented oftentimes that can help to sway public opinion.
So we talked to a woman who was part of organizing the center in Vancouver, and it started out with the surrounding community being very much against the idea, and then they took a survey several months after the center had opened, and a majority of the public was on board with the idea. Because what they found is that not only do the centers decrease public use, but people can also go into the overdose prevention center to use, and it also takes care of, you know, cleaning up drug paraphernalia that would be associated with drug use on the street, like needles. And it also did not increase crime in the immediate surrounding area.
WSHU: Did it increase the use of drugs, the use of illegal drugs? Did that increase? That's a real concern: if you make it safe for people to use illegal drugs, there might be more drug use.
KG: I think that might be pretty hard to measure, because people are hesitant to admit illegal drug use. However, the results from the centers that have been established and the studies that have been done show that people who use the centers do increase uptake of treatment services. So we can't say for sure whether this increases or decreases drug use. But a hesitation we heard from the Republicans on the Public Health Committee, who almost unanimously voted against this measure, even though it passed out of committee, was, you know, does this encourage drug use instead of encouraging treatment? And at least some of the studies we've seen suggest that it encourages treatment, seeking treatment. What we'll hear from a lot of advocates is that their number one goal is to prevent death. And of all the overdose prevention centers in the world, there is no record of a death at an overdose prevention center. So you can imagine all the deaths that occur outside an overdose prevention center. And so what advocates will say is the bottom line is we're trying to reduce death, and death is not happening at these places.
WSHU: Now, the fact that the bill did not make it this time around, this last session was pretty much driven by Governor Ned Lamont’s (D) opposition. You talked with the governor. What did he have to say? Why was it because of community concerns? Why did he feel we should put the brakes and wait and see on this?
KG: Yeah, so the governor said he actually didn't hear any overwhelming community concern. The public hearing for this bill was eight hours long, and it was mostly about this bill, and not one person testified against it. And he admitted it was not like people were banging on his office door saying, Don't bring these to Connecticut. His concern was, really, that it was still the early days. And that's true in the United States. It is still early days.
WSHU: But we have Rhode Island right here, and they started this year.
KG: They started in January.
WSHU: Okay, so there wasn't enough time to really study it and see.
KG: Yes. So essentially, his point is that it's still early days. Let's see how New York and Rhode Island get on, and let's take it from there.
WSHU: What's the difference between Rhode Island and New York? Are they pretty much running the same type of facilities in both states?
KG: They're running very similar facilities. I would say the key difference we heard from elected officials in each place was the way that these overdose prevention centers were established. So in Rhode Island, this took multiple years to pass in the Rhode Island legislature, and then nonprofits had to bid for the contract to actually open it. Project Weber/RENEW, the nonprofit in Rhode Island, won that contract; they had to find a location and get a favorable vote from the Providence City Council. And they really were, you know, we heard from the councilwoman where this center is in her ward, and she said they were relentless in terms of showing up to community meetings, educating people on the benefits of these centers. And eventually, they found a location that was in the Medical District in Providence. It's literally called the hospital district. Laura and I got a chance to visit it, and it really hits you when you're driving into it. There are no schools, there are no commercial businesses. There is, you know, a spinal center and an OBGYN.
WSHU: Does it stand out? If you didn't know there was an overdose prevention center there?
KG: You wouldn't know, wouldn't know what it was.
WSHU: You wouldn't see people hanging outside? Because that's one of the concerns of communities, it will attract people to hang out on the streets, etc.
KG: Nope, on our way in, we didn't see anyone hanging out outside. On our way out, there were a few, a handful of people outside. But it's not like they are using the drugs outdoors. It's the way you might see a few people hanging out outside a community center. So no, it's just not. It doesn't stand out in the area at all. It looks like just another medical facility. And the Councilwoman we spoke with in Rhode Island said that the location was part of what convinced her.
Things were done pretty differently in New York City. So on the last day of Mayor Bill de Blasio’s administration, he announced that two of these would go up in New York City, and he announced which neighborhoods they would be in. And the Councilwoman we spoke with there said she found out on the same day as all her constituents that one would be going up in her neighborhood in Washington Heights, and she said she still gets complaints from people. Also, you know, New York is much more dense. It's more difficult to find a hospital district-type location. So this did end up going right alongside one of the community's biggest and most popular parks, which caused a lot of issues in the beginning. She said that things have gotten better, and she would still, she still thinks that the overdose prevention center is a net positive, but she wonders what it would have been like, how the community would be reacting if there was buy-in like there was in Providence.
WSHU: Now, Katy, what is the advocacy community? What are they doing now that this bill failed this year? Have they got plans to reintroduce it? What's going on regarding their feelings about getting this done in Connecticut?
KG: I do think the plan is to continue to reintroduce it. One advocate suggested that there should be a special session, so they are committed to this. State Senator Anwar and Representative McCarthy Vahey, the co-chairs of the Public Health Committee, are both very much committed to this idea. And Representative McCarthy Vahey, on the day that the bill went through without the overdose prevention center measure, said, This is day one of the next effort, basically. So there is an appetite, certainly, to reintroduce.
WSHU: And Lamont, does he have an open mind? Is he prepared to consider it?
KG: Our conversation with Governor Lamont suggests he definitely has an open mind. He said, "This is not a hell no, this is just a wait and see.” So we will wait and see.
