CT health committee proposes pilot program for overdose prevention sites in state

Stamford Advocate – Monday, February 24, 2025
By Lisa Backus

HARTFORD — A bill proposed by the Public Health Committee would create a pilot program to start four overdose prevention centers throughout the state to provide education on the use of drugs that reverse an overdose, mental health counseling, clean needles and a place to consume opioids with medical staff present.

If Connecticut had an overdose prevention center in 2018, Dita Bhargava told a crowd at the state Capitol Friday, she feels her son Alec Pelletier would be alive today.

Instead, Pelletier, whom his mother called funny and loving, died of an overdose alone on his 26th birthday at a sober home in Canaan. “He was on the path to recovery,” Bhargava said. “If he had been in a safe and supportive place without judgement, he’d be here today,” she added.

Bhargava was one of many family members and supporters of the bill in attendance at a news conference staged by state Sen. Saud Anwar, D-South Windsor, one of the co-chairs of the committee and a practicing physician, before a public hearing on the bill Friday.

Anwar and others admitted that it’s considered a controversial proposal to allow people to actively use illegal drugs in a state-sponsored setting. But he said Connecticut has a moral imperative to act now to save lives.

“We can continue to mourn the people we love,” he said. Or, “we can choose life,” Anwar continued, saying the state should choose courage over fear and action over indifference. “An overdose is not a crime, it’s a crisis,” he said.

Dozens of people submitted testimony in favor of the plan prior to the hearing, calling the proposal a potential life-saver for state residents who suffer from substance abuse disorder.

One of the dissenters, however, was state Department of Public Health Commissioner Manisha Juthani, who called the aspect of the proposal that would allow people to use opioids on-site a violation of federal law.

“DPH understands the policy interest for an overdose prevention centers as they create safer environments for people to use drugs, especially for higher risk populations,” Juthani said in her written testimony. “However, the department has significant legal concerns with allowing overdose prevention centers to offer a location within the facility where people can safely consume controlled substances. The center, the property owners, and any licensed providers involved would be putting themselves at risk of federal criminal and civil penalties.”

Juthani contended in her testimony that knowingly allowing someone to use controlled substances on their property is a federal crime punishable by prison time and a fine.

“This means that any facility that allows the illegal use of a controlled substance, like an overdose prevention center, would violate federal law,” Juthani said in the testimony. “Additionally, violation of this law carries a criminal penalty of up to 20 years in prison and fines that can amount to up to $2 million. The law applies to both the operators, employees, and property owners of safe injection sites. A federal appeals court has specifically held that this criminal statute would apply to the operation of a safe injection site.”

The so-called “crack house” law that makes it a federal crime to use or allow use in a crack house Juthani referenced in her testimony, doesn’t likely apply to state-sponsored public health initiatives, said Scott Burris, an attorney and researcher with Temple Law School’s Center for Public Health Law. Those types of arguments are “insincere,” Burris said, before likening Juthani’s response to the proposed law to previous pushback to needle exchange programs.

“You should proceed with considerable legal confidence into this action,” Burris said.

In response to Burris’ comments, a DPH spokesperson said Juthani felt it was important to highlight the legal challenges associated with safe injection sites.

According to figures issued by the DPH and state Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, the tally of accidental fatal overdoses is estimated to be 1,118 for 2024. That’s about a 16 percent decrease from 2023, when there were 1,329 accidental fatal overdoses. The final figures for 2024 won’t be ready for a few weeks, said Chief Medical Examiner James Gill.

The numbers have gone down since the peak of accidental overdoses in Connecticut in 2021 when 1,524 died, the data shows. The last time fewewr than 1,000 people died of an accidental overdose was in 2016. By contrast, in 2012, 357 people died in Connecticut of an accidental overdose, according to Gill’s figures.

Overdose prevention centers, also called OPCs, work, said Darwin Fisher, manager of a site in Canada for two decades. More people are dying on a daily basis of overdoses in Connecticut than have died in any of Canada’s OPCs in the past 20 years, Fisher said during the public hearing. “No one has ever died at an OPC in Canada,” Fisher said.

For the purposes of the proposed state law, an overdose prevention center means a community-based facility at which a person with substance abuse issues can receive a variety of services including education on the risks of sharing needles, referrals to treatment, access to laundry machines and showers, and a place to rest.

The bill also said the centers would be in a “separate location within the facility,” and would allow people to “safely consume controlled substances under the observation of licensed health care providers who are present to provide necessary medical treatment in the event of an overdose of a controlled substance.”

According to the proposed law, by July 1, 2026, the state Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services, in consultation with the DPH, “shall establish a pilot program to prevent drug overdoses through the establishment of overdose prevention centers in four municipalities in the state” selected by the Commissioner of DHMAS, subject to the approval of the chief elected official of each municipality selected.

The centers would provide people with test strips and any other drug testing technology and referrals to mental health counseling or medical treatment.

Health care providers who participate in the pilot program would not be subject to disciplinary action by the DPH, according to the proposed law.

A similar law did not pass two years ago.

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