A plan to allow safe injection sites in Denver passed an early hurdle at Monday's City Council meeting.
The proposal is to open one pilot location for two years and then assess how those two years went.
City Council member Albus Brooks is a driving force behind the proposed ordinance. He said the idea is to move drug use, including heroin and cocaine, out of public places like bathrooms and alleys, to a supervised spot, where trained staff would be there in case someone overdoses.
Brooks said he is passionate about this after his own brush with opioids, which is a story he started sharing publicly last year.
“Here, I am a city councilman. I had cancer,” said Brooks. “I had a tough surgery and started taking some opioids my doctor gave me. Beginning to take these, I started feeling a reliance on these and I saw how easy it was to fall into addiction.”
This is the second time Brooks is working to pave the way for a supervised injection site. Earlier this year, the state legislature was asked to waive a nuisance law so the site wouldn’t be shut down for drug use on the property. However, the state legislature did not approve the waiver in February - effectively ending any prospects of a supervised injection site.
Brooks said the plan is to bring up this issue again after the new session starts in January and that it’s important for the proposed plan to comply with state law.
Not everyone agrees this pilot project is the best idea. When Lynette Martinez, who is from Brighton, found out what the Denver City Council was considering, she said she felt so compelled to share what happened to her family she reached out to 9NEWS to talk.
“I lost my niece eight months ago to an overdose of heroin,” she said.
Martinez said she doesn’t support the pilot project, worried it would further enable drug addicts and give them one more place to get high.
Martinez also said she doesn’t think people will go out of their way to go to a specific site to use.
“They are going to use in an alley, they are going to use in a bathroom,” she said, “They’re going to use wherever they need to get that fix in that present moment.”
In response, Brooks said he studied Vancouver, Canada's supervised injection site program already in place and got a very different picture.
Brooks said Vancouver is one of more than 60 cities around the world - and the closest to Denver - with similar supervised injection site programs already in effect. Brooks said the program shows projects like this can help prevent overdose deaths, reduce diseases spreading and help people access treatment.
According to the Vancouver Coast Health website, last year 7,301 people made 175,464 visits and there were 2,151 overdose interventions.
Denver is not the only U.S. city working on plans for a safe injection site. Others include Seattle, Philadelphia and San Francisco - just to name a few.
The question of whether or not the federal government steps in and says a supervised injection site violates federal law is still to be seen. Brooks said, if that was this case, he would understand - with one caveat.
“We would say we are responding to a public health crisis,” he said. “If you still want to shut down our facility, knowing we are solving a public health crisis, be our guest. We are protecting our community.”
The first reading passed City Council in an 11 to 1 vote. One person was absent Monday night.
City Council member Kevin Flynn was the sole vote against it Monday.
A final vote is scheduled for next Monday.