Seattle Plans to Open a Safe Site to Shoot Heroin

It would be the first of its kind in the United States.

Seattle is planning on opening a safe consumption site for heroin users. It would be the first of its kind in the United States, taking needle exchange a step further by creating a legal location to shoot up.

The King County Heroin and Prescription Opiate Addiction Task Force is proposing the city create "safe consumption sites," or places for people to use heroin and other opioids, with access to clean needles and treatment, without fear of being arrested. Seattle Mayor Ed Murray has pledged to support the site, promising to fight any blowback.

Here in Portland, Multnomah County has long had a needle-exchange program, and recently added biohazard drop boxes for used syringes, but has not gone so far as creating an authorized drug-use site.

Related: Demand for drug syringes spikes in Portland.

The recommendation comes as the task force released a 99-page report, which examines heroin usage in King County, and included a breakdown of how consumption sites have worked in other countries.

"If this is a strategy that saves lives, if there are people who are going to die if we do not do this, then regardless of the political discomfort, I think it is something we have to move forward with," King County Executive Dow Constantine told The Stranger.

They also made several other recommendations, including increasing access to overdose-reversal drugs like Naloxone. In 2013, Portland broadened Naloxone's availability for application from doctors only to include friends, family, caseworkers, other drug users and anyone else who's around people using heroin.

The increased availability was successful in preventing heroin deaths: Between 2012 and 2014, the number of heroin deaths in the county fell from 92 to 56.

Related: A new law expanding the use of an anti-overdose drug is cutting the number of heroin deaths.

But despite a decrease in heroin deaths, the demand for needles has increased in Multnomah County. Last year, the county's needle exchange program distributed a record number of syringes: more than 3 million, a 59 percent increase from three years ago.

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