Some neighbors, politicians and media have claimed that the centers are increasing crime and public drug use in neighborhoods already burdened with poverty.
important new study published this week refutes these claims. It shows that violent and property crime rates near the two overdose prevention centers did not increase any more than crime in similar neighborhoods elsewhere in the city. This was in spite of the fact that the police conducted 83 percent fewer drug arrests near the sites (likely to avoid deterring people with addiction from using them) compared with other harm reduction sites that did not offer safe injection.
“We did not observe any increase in crime or disorder or any of the things that people worry about when they see an overdose prevention site opening,” said a study co-author, Brandon Del Pozo, an assistant professor of medicine at Brown University and a former New York Police Department precinct commander and police chief of Burlington, Vt.
Dr. Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, the federal agency that funded the study, acknowledged critics’ fears that this approach could bring more disorder. But the research, she said, is evidence to the contrary: It doesn’t. Although the American data is preliminary since it comes from a single study, “what it does show is that having these safe injection sites is not associated with an increase in violence,” Dr. Volkow said.
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