Should CT open places to use drugs? A senator says it would save lives

Hartford Courant – Friday, March 20, 2026
By Livi Stanford

At a minimum two people die per day from overdoses in the state, a statistic that continues to plague Sen. Saud Anwar, who says the deaths are preventable.

This is the second year Anwar, the co-chair of the state’s Public Health Committee and a physician, is advocating for a bill to establish overdose prevention centers in the state, which he said will save lives.

“It’s unacceptable to let our citizens die when we know that those deaths can be prevented and rehab can be provided to them,” he said. “We know from the data that when you have an overdose prevention center you have a 43% chance of a person getting rehab. We want people to live and be accepted in society and provided a rehabilitation opportunity.”

If SB 195 passes, Connecticut would join New York and Rhode Island, which have overdose prevention centers.

While advocates and several lawmakers say the centers help to save lives and prevent drug overdoses, other lawmakers, a New York representative and The Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services have highlighted concerns that the centers could violate federal law.

Elizabeth Benton, spokesperson for Attorney General William Tong’s office, said the attorney general’s office has not commented on the legislation.

The Public Health Committee approved SB 195 in a 20-11 party line vote, with Republicans voting against the measure.

Plans to open overdose prevention centers have faced scrutiny in other states with concerns that the centers violate the Controlled Substances Act, according to the John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

The Controlled Substances Act “prohibits someone from owning, leasing, managing, controlling, opening, or using a place to illegally use, store, manufacture, or distribute controlled substances,” according to the bill analysis of SB 195.

Safehouse, a Philadelphia-based nonprofit organization, was prevented from opening such a site in Philadelphia due to a legal challenge, according to the John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. And in California, Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed a bill in 2022 that would have allowed pilot overdose prevention sites.

At overdose prevention centers, people use “substances obtained elsewhere in a controlled setting” and are monitored by staff who are trained to detect and respond to overdoses, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse.

U.S. Rep. Nicole Malliotakis, of New York, has been a staunch opponent of overdose prevention centers in New York.

“Heroin injection centers have been a disaster for New York City,” she said in an email. “They’ve not only attracted crime and unsavory activity to neighborhoods, but have only enabled drug addiction by providing a community center for addicts to shoot up at taxpayer expense. Additionally, the city chose to place them near schools and day care centers with no regard for the impact these sites have on children and families.”

The state’s Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services wrote in its testimony on the bill that “without a change in federal law, the opening of overdose prevention centers would violate this statute,” referring to the Controlled Substances Act.

“We understand other states have pursued alternative paths regarding this law, but whether the federal government will intervene in jurisdictions that authorize or operate these centers will remain within the discretion of the federal administration in power,” said DMHAS Commissioner Nancy Navarretta in her testimony.

But Anwar and other advocates for the centers say the Controlled Substances Act is not applicable in this case.

“The fear of the federal government is not real because it has not been an issue in New York or Rhode Island,” Anwar said.

He said the neighboring states that have overdose prevention centers are proving that they can be effective.

536 deaths

Last year, Anwar offered a similar proposal but a provision to establish overdose prevention centers throughout the state was stripped from a bill at the governor’s behest, according to Anwar.

Anwar said since May 29th, there have been 536 overdose deaths in the state.

Since 2024, the number of overdose deaths have declined in the state from 989 in 2024 to 774 as of the second week in December in 2025, according to the state’s Department of Public Health.

Rob Blanchard, communications director for Lamont, did not respond to questions from the Courant whether the governor was in favor of establishing overdose prevention centers in the state.

“The governor has heard from individuals with lived experience battling addiction, as well as the providers working on the front lines,” Blanchard said. “He remains committed to expanding access to treatment, supporting long-term recovery, and funding ways to reduce overdose deaths. He looks forward to continuing to collaborate with legislators, advocates, and impacted communities on efforts to save lives and break the cycle of addiction.”

Opposition to the legislation

Sen. Jeff Gordon, a Woodstock Republican on the Public Health Committee and a physician, said he voted against the bill because of the “provision that would allow people to go to the harm reduction centers and actively use illegal drugs.

“It’s against federal law and we’ve had prior testimony from state agencies about that,” Gordon said. “I do support harm reduction centers to try to help people who have various addictions seek help, but I can’t vote for something that is illegal.”

Rep. Karen Reddington Hughes, a Woodbury Republican, also voted against the bill.

“My heart goes out to anyone with addiction,” she said. “But I don’t know that this is the answer to helping them work through addiction, to allow them to go to a safe spot to shoot up, which is illegal and would allow for the people assisting them to be there and observe it.”

Reddington Hughes said there should be more programs to help those with addiction.

“This is really a crisis,” she said.

Sen. Heather Somers, a Groton Republican and a ranking member on the Public Health Committee, who also voted against the bill said she supported an amendment that failed along party lines that would support harm reduction centers but would not allow people to inject illegal drugs on premises.

“There’s no studies that I can find that show that if you have an overdose prevention center where you’re allowed to inject illicit street drugs that it translates into getting somebody help,” she said. “There’s no data to show that.”

Somers said she supported harm reduction centers in providing people access to care, a safe place and wraparound services.

“But the big difference, the tipping point for me is allowing someone to come in with an illicit, illegal street drug and be able to inject it on site,” she said.

Rhode Island overdose prevention center

Project Weber/RENEW, a Rhode Island harm reduction and recovery organization, operates the state’s only state-regulated overdose prevention center in Rhode Island. It was established in 2025.

Annajane Yolken, director of strategy at Project Weber/RENEW, said since the center opened, there have been over 10,000 visits to the overdose prevention center and staff had to medically intervene 200 times. She said there have been no deaths at the center.

As one of the lobbyists who was advocating for such a center in Rhode Island, Yolken said lawmakers felt “deeply impacted by the loss of people to overdose, whether it was a family member, constituents or friends.”

“They saw that the efforts that we had been doing were making a difference, things like naloxone distribution treatment,” she said. “But still too many people were dying.”

In 2023, there were 404 deaths in Rhode Island due to overdoses, according to the Rhode Island Department of Health. By comparison, in 2025 there were 210 deaths.

“Overdose fatalities in Rhode Island decreased by approximately 33% during the first eight months of 2025, compared to the first 8 months of 2024,” said Joseph Wendelken, spokesman for the Rhode Island Department of Health. “However, the overdose prevention center was one of many evidence-based interventions in place in Rhode Island during this time.”

Yolken said the center has been able to offer wraparound services to Rhode Island residents including substance use treatment, behavioral health care and medical care.

“Every year that this doesn’t get passed, not only do people die, but people are denied access to really important services that can change the trajectory of their lives,” she said, referring to the proposed legislation in Connecticut.

She said prior to the center being established people would come in for harm reduction supplies and then because they didn’t have a use space on site people would “go to a public restroom, maybe a fast food restaurant or they would go behind a dumpster and people would die because they were alone.”

‘But there’s more we can do’

Robert Heimer, professor of epidemiology and pharmacology at Yale University, said the overdose rate has been reduced in the state by 40% since the peak in 2021 aided by funds from the Opioid Settlement Advisory Committee.

But he said “there’s more we can do.

“Overdose prevention centers work particularly well for one population of people where we haven’t seen as large a decline in overdoses and that’s the older populations who are dying and living in urban areas,” he said. “These overdose deaths would be preventable in an overdose prevention center that’s most likely to go in places like New Haven and Hartford and Bridgeport and New London where these people are.”

Heimer said statistics show that overdose prevention centers are all over the world and that no one dies using them.

“They are in Canada, Australia and Europe and they have been there for 20 plus years in some of these places,” he said.

Heimer said the reason they have not been enacted in the state is because of “political fear that the federal government is going to come after them and sue them for instituting these spaces.”

Elizabeth Evans, senior director of community outreach and homeless services at Liberation Programs in Bridgeport, said she oversaw overdose prevention centers in Canada and New York for 12 years and has seen how they have saved lives.

In Vancouver, Canada, the opening of an OPC led to a “35% reduction in overdose mortality in the neighborhood,” according to a study in Lancet.

Evans said “too many human beings die because we build our system around denial instead of an informed public health response.

“Overdose prevention centers are about meeting a person where they are acknowledging reality and communicating that their lives have value and preventing death from overdose,” she said.

The bill would have to be called for a vote on the floor, pass both chambers of the state legislature and be signed by the governor to become law.

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