City officials in San Francisco are looking at permitting nonprofits to set up supervised drug use sites.
Politico reported that Mayor London Breed said Wednesday she and Supervisor Hillary
Ronen are working to repeal a city law that stops nonprofits from establishing sites where people can come to inject drugs with clean needles under the supervision of those trained to prevent overdoses.
A report on the city's website site noted: "In 2020 the Board of Supervisors approved legislation establishing a permitting structure for city-funded overdose prevention programs. This law as written does not allow for any overdose prevention program to open until federal and state legal issues have been resolved, whether it's funded by the city or by private resources.
"Since that law was enacted, non-profits in New York have opened overdose prevention sites without public funding, and various non-profits in San Francisco have expressed interest in doing the same. San Francisco's current law would not allow them to do so.
"To address this issue, Mayor Breed and Supervisor Ronen are introducing legislation to repeal the 2020 permitting structure for overdose prevention programs. If approved by the Board of Supervisors, this would allow a non-profit to open a site with private funding before federal and state legal issues are resolved."
Breed said: "We are committed to opening overdose prevention sites in San Francisco, but due to legal restrictions, there remain significant challenges. Despite that, we are continuing to work with our nonprofit partners to find creative ways to open these sites, and these steps are critical for that to happen.
"Overdose prevention sites can be part of a comprehensive strategy that can save lives and address open-air drug use in our communities. Fentanyl is challenging us like never before, and in addition to opening up these sites, we have to work with law enforcement to close the open-air drug markets and ensure that our neighborhoods feel improvements as we bring these resources to bear."
And Ronen has urged city leaders to take action, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.
"The Biden administration and this Newsom administration — are not going to throw San Francisco in jail or cut off our federal funding because we're saving lives and stopping open air drug use," she said of Gov. Gavin Newsome's local administration.