Fund Multiple Overdose Prevention Centers (OPCs)

What You Need To Know

• There have been no recorded deaths in supervised injection facilities in countries that permit them.

• Overdose prevention centers (OPCs) are facilities designed to reduce the potential risks of drug use, including overdose and unwanted public use. OPCs help bring public drug use indoors. Participants bring their own drugs and have access to drug checking. Trained staff provide sterile supplies and intervene if an overdose occurs. OPCs connect people with support services, including voluntary treatment.

• Reports found no link between safe injection sites and the rates of various crimes, though public drug use dropped off in some places.* 

• OPCs reduce risk behaviors associated with HIV and hepatitis; increase connections to health services; reduce drug use in public, including syringes discarded in public.

• 64% of Americans support opening OPCs.*

Where to Go for More Information

• Drug Policy Alliance

• Overview Of Supervised Consumption Services In The United States

• Safer Consumption Spaces in the United States: Uniting for a National Movement

• Supervised drug-consumption sites go back decades in Europe, Australia and Canada.

Programs To Know

•  OnPoint NYC

• Insite

  
  

Leaders to Know

• Leading with Compassion: A Conversation with Sam Rivera // Rivera emphasizes that his clients are “beautiful, smart, and kind individuals who deserve to be treated with respect and compassion at all stages of their lives.”

Research

• Supervised Injection Facilities and Other Supervised Consumption Sites: Effectiveness and Value

• Drug consumption rooms in Catalonia: A comprehensive evaluation of social, health and harm reduction benefits

• Injection Drug Use Cessation and Use of North America’s First Medically Supervised Safer Injecting Facility

• Self-reported changes in drug use behaviors and syringe disposal methods following the opening of a supervised injecting facility in Copenhagen, Denmark

• Harm Reduction Services to Prevent and Treat Infectious Diseases in People Who Use Drugs

• Supervised injection facility use and exposure to violence among a cohort of people who inject drugs: A gender-based analysis

• Bipartisan Majority of Voters Support Harm Reduction Measures and Decriminalizing Small Amounts of Drug Possession

• To what extent do supervised drug consumption services incorporate non-injection routes of administration? A systematic scoping review documenting existing facilities

• Implementation and sustainability of safe consumption sites: a qualitative systematic review and thematic synthesis 

• Impact of a medically supervised safer injection facility on community drug use patterns: a before and after study    

• Safer Drug Consumption Facilities - Evidence Paper - Government of Scotland (UK) 

• Understanding Morals is Key to Accepting SAfe Injection Sites - Scientific American 

• Whats the Evidence That Supervised Drug Injection Sites Save Lives? - NPR 

• Safe Injection Sites Reducing the Stigma of Addiction - Harvard 

• Spotlight on Drug Consumption Rooms - European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction