By Bobby Allyn
Attorney Ilana Eisenstein representing the nonprofit group Safehouse, recently spoke to the media about the legal fight with the Justice Department over a proposed supervised injection site. A federal judge on Wednesday declared that the plan does not violate U.S. drug law.
Matt Rourke/AP
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Matt Rourke/AP
Updated at 3:30 p.m. ET
A judge has ruled that a Philadelphia nonprofit group’s plan to open the first site in the U.S. where people can use illegal opioids under medical supervision does not violate federal drug laws, delivering a major blow to Justice Department lawyers who have been working to block the facility.
U.S. District Judge Gerald McHugh ruled Wednesday that Safehouse’s plan to allow people to bring in their own drugs and use them in a medical facility to help combat fatal overdoses does not violate the Controlled Substances Act.
“The ultimate goal of Safehouse’s proposed operation is to reduce drug use, not facilitate it,” McHugh wrote in his opinion.
The decision means that America’s first supervised injection site, or what advocates call an “overdose prevention site,” can go forward. Justice Department prosecutors had sued to block the site, calling the proposal “in-your-face illegal activity.”
Ronda Goldfein, who is Safehouse’s vice president and secretary, said winning judicial approval is a major feat for advocates of the proposed site, which also has the backing of top city officials.
“Philadelphia is being devastated. We’ve lost about three people a day” to opioid overdoses, Goldfein said. “And we say we had to do something better and we couldn’t sit back and let that death toll rise. And the court agreed with us.”
Similar facilities exist in Canada and Europe, but no such site has gotten legal permission to open in the U.S. Cities like New York, Denver and Seattle have been publicly debating similar proposals, but many were waiting for the outcome of the court battle in Philadelphia.
Prosecutors had contended that the plan violated a provision of the Controlled Substances Act that makes it illegal to own a property where drugs are being used — known as “the crack house statute.” But backers of Safehouse argued the law was outdated and not written to prevent the opening of a medical facility aimed at saving lives in the midst of the opioid crisis.
“We have consistently said we did not have an illegal purpose. We have a lawful purpose. Our purpose is to save lives,” Goldfein said.
On Wednesday, in a move that surprised observers, McHugh agreed.
“The statutory language that matters most is ‘purpose,’ and no credible argument can be made that a constructive lawful purpose is rendered predatory and unlawful simply because it moves indoors. Viewed objectively, what Safehouse proposes is far closer to the harm reduction strategies expressly endorsed by Congress,” McHugh wrote.