Movement on SF consumption sites

At long last, there is movement among city leaders to establish privately-run safe consumption sites in San Francisco. Last week, Mayor London Breed and District 9 Supervisor Hillary Ronen announced local steps the city is taking to address a recently identified permitting barrier to move forward with non-city-operated overdose prevention sites. It seems that when the Board of Supervisors approved legislation establishing a permitting structure for city-funded overdose prevention sites in 2020, the law as written does not allow for any overdose prevention program – run by the city or a non-governmental entity – to open until federal and state legal issues have been resolved. As we have written over the past few years, the federal government still does not recognize safe consumption sites. At the state level, also as we’ve reported, Governor Gavin Newsom vetoed a bill last year that would have allowed pilot programs in San Francisco, Oakland, and Los Angeles. We know that these legal issues have been the main concern of San Francisco leaders and that even though the city purchased a building that could be used for such a program, it was unlikely to do so under city control. Hence, the need for a nonprofit agency to operate a program that’s not on city property – at least for now.

Nonprofits, such as the San Francisco AIDS Foundation, have expressed interest in running a safe consumption site, but as it stands now, it would not be able to. The proposed legislation by Breed and Ronen would repeal the 2020 permitting structure, thus allowing a nonprofit to open a site with private funding before state and federal legal issues are resolved. The legislation was to be introduced Tuesday, and Breed has asked board President Aaron Peskin to expedite the ordinance. We agree. The Board of Supervisors needs to hear this in committee and approve it as quickly as possible so that sites can get up and running. Safe consumption sites allow people to bring their own drugs to the facility and use them