Gospel Mission president: Injection sites essentially legalize heroin

While standing in the front lines of Seattle’s fight against homelessness, Jeff Lilley and those working with Seattle’s Union Gospel Mission have had a pretty good view of the city’s issues with opioid use. And with the King County on track to implement a pair of safe-injection sites, Lilley suggests that area leaders rethink upholding Vancouver’s safe injection site as some beacon proving that the sites work.

“Last month Vancouver came in and said, we’re going to have to raise taxes across the board for the entire city just to address our emergency response to what’s going on with the heroin overdoses that they’re seeing in Vancouver,” Lilley told the Ron and Don Show during their ride along in the Union Gospel Mission’s search and rescue van. “It is off the charts. And everybody’s quoting, ‘No, it’s working in Vancouver. They’re quoting 2004 stats, to show we checked it in 2003, we checked it in 2004, and the 2004 numbers are better because we opened in 2004. And you’re right, that means absolutely nothing today.”

Related: Safe injection site testimony shows clear divide

Citing “crisis levels” of heroin and opiate addiction among youth and adults, Heroin and Prescription Opiate Addiction Task Force proposed recommendations to establish safe injection sites where addicts can consume drugs under medical supervision. Those recommendations were approved by the county health board. The sites are viewed as an extension of the needle-exchange program already up and running in King County. Officials aim to establish two safe injection sites within a year in areas where public drug use is prevalent.

Health officials believe the safe injection sites will be a success, noting a survey of addicts showed that 87 percent would prefer to use such a location.

Safe injection site lessons from Vancouver

Vancouver’s safe injection sites have federal approval from the Canadian government and have been in place since 2003.

KIRO Radio spoke to Travis Lupick, a Vancouver reporter who covers the opioid epidemic in Canada. Lupick says that Vancouver has effectively legalized hard drugs already — just look at the arrest and prosecution rates for heroin and cocaine.

“That number has decreased from more than 1,500 in 2007 to just 185 last year,” Lupick said. “What that means is that the city of Vancouver is essentially no longer arresting people for dealing hard drugs on the street. They’re only going after high-level traffickers. So in many ways, while BC has not technically legalized drugs, we’re enforcing federal drug laws in very different ways than the rest of the country.”

Lilley suggests heading to Vancouver to see the results for yourself.

“If you’ve not been up there, go up to East Hastings and as soon as you turn the corner into the neighborhood, I tell you, you will have the question answered for yourself. It is zombies,” he said. “You haven’t seen nothing tonight that even comes close to what’s going on there. And we’re arguing that that’s what we need to do here?”

Lilley says safe injection sites say something very specific about how much society cares about addicts.

“When you have a safe-injection site, the concept is you want to make sure that if they have an overdose, they don’t die,” he said. “So that means they can shoot up, they can do all the other things that are destroying their life and we’re OK with that, as long as they don’t die.”

What Union Gospel Mission would rather see happen

Lilley said that he may not be totally in favor of safe injection sites, but they’re also not entirely opposed.

“The answer to the question is we’re not fans,” he said. “Are we taking it off the table? Uh-uh. Because in the end, could it save his life? Yeah. If he goes down to the safe injection site, which he’s not going to do.”

Lilley noted that since opioid addiction deaths have now exceeded that of traffic accidents, the latter makes an apt metaphor for how opioid addicts get to the point where they would need a safe injection site. He sets up like this: You’re driving in a car, rounding a corner too fast and hit a tree.

“You hit the tree, your face goes into the windshield, it busts out some teeth, fractures your nose, then it spins off the tree, goes and hits a boulder, now you’ve fractured your femur and broken some ribs, then the car tumbles some more,” he said. “Now you’ve ruptured your spleen; you’re getting torn up. And you get banged up and twisted up and crushed and then right as that last part, you hit the air and you’re flying through the air in your car and you’re about to hit the bottom and at the bottom, there’s this big airbag that just goes ‘pfff.’ And it absorbs the car and catches you so you don’t die.”

As for what we should actually be doing instead, Lilley said that while safe injection sites save lives, that is not enough. Rather than waiting for a crash, he suggests being proactive.

“You know we care about the individuals we’re talking about, that their lives will be saved but, quite frankly, put in a guardrail,” he said. “Put in a speed limit sign that says slow down, have a cop there that’s gonna pull you over if you’re actually breaking the law and you shouldn’t be going that fast. Do things that are gonna slow people down because all the way along the line, these lives are in severe pain. We’re seeing it tonight. These are people that are not living happily. And at that point in time when you’re tumbling down the hill, for us to stop and say well, we’re gonna save you at the bottom, that’s gonna be our compassion? It’s like, that’s not compassion. Compassion would be to stop it from ever happening.”

Related: Seattle Mission: Homeless crisis is not a partisan issue

What’s more, Lilley says we are making a specific choice to change the law in our city. He pointed to King County Sheriff John Urquhart’s discussion with KIRO Radio’s Dori Monson about how deputies are to treat people at, or on their way, to safe injection sites with illegal drugs. Despite Urquhart’s declaration that the sites wouldn’t be a “get-out-of-jail-free card,” Lilley doubts that prosecutors will have any luck in drug cases when a task safe-injection site can be used as an excuse, which will tie the sheriff’s hands.

“The attorneys are gonna stop and go, ‘Look, we’ve got a guy, he knows he has an addiction, we know it’s bad for him, we know everything else, but he was on his way so he could do this without overdosing and dying. That’s a good thing. Why are you pulling him over and giving him a hard time for that?'” Lilley said. “So the sheriff is going, we’re not going to fight those court cases. So what does that mean? They are no longer going to arrest for possession of heroin and that type of thing and what that means is we have just legalized heroin. So we have this whole conversation about legalizing marijuana, that safe injection site in effect is legalizing heroin in Seattle.”