California bid to create legal drug injection sites advances

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — California moved a step closer Wednesday to creating sites where people could legally use drugs under supervision designed to save them from dying if they overdose, over the objections of opponents who said the state would be enabling dangerous and illegal activity.

The full Assembly will now consider allowing test programs in Los Angeles, Oakland and San Francisco, more than a year after the proposal narrowly passed the state Senate.

“We know that we are experiencing a crisis of overdose deaths, and these are preventable," said Democratic Sen. Scott Wiener. “This is one way to help keep people safe and to actually help people get into treatment.”

Assembly Public Safety Committee members advanced the bill on a 5-2 vote after hearing conflicting statistics about the experiences in Canada, Europe, Australia and most recently two sites in New York City.

There has been not a single overdose death in the supervised sites, said Wiener and proponents of his bill.

But people still are dying around them, attracted to neighborhoods where drug use is overtly sanctioned by the government, countered opponents.

“There is a magnet effect so that people come into the area,” said John Lovell, testifying on behalf of the California Narcotic Officers’ Association and several other police organizations.

“What they’re proposing is addiction maintenance. ... I think that we need to embrace addiction recovery," said Michael Shellenberger, author of a book entitled ”San Fransicko: Why Progressives Ruin Cities" and a no party preference candidate for California governor.

Clean needle exchanges were once also controversial, before they became a largely accepted way of minimizing the spread of HIV, hepatitis and other diseases that can be spread through the sharing of...