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BOSTON (State House News Service) - Years into a so far unsuccessful campaign to secure legal support for supervised drug use in controlled facilities, a medical expert warned Wednesday that the increasing presence of fentanyl and other synthetic opioids has made the stakes even higher.
Dr. Jessie Gaeta, an internist and addiction medicine specialist who works with the Boston Health Care for the Homeless program, said the window in which a drug user can be revived from an opioid overdose continues to shrink as the supply becomes more tainted by additional substances.
Gaeta and other supporters including the Massachusetts Medical Society have been pressing lawmakers for years to launch a pilot program authorizing overdose prevention facilities, sometimes referred to as safe consumption or supervised injection sites, where individuals could take drugs they acquired themselves using clean equipment under the watch of medical professionals who could intervene in case of an overdose.
Because fentanyl is such a powerful synthetic opioid, Gaeta said first responders can quickly "miss the chance" to reverse a potentially fatal overdose if they are not already alongside a drug user at the moment of injection. The latest state data found fentanyl was present in 93 percent of fatal opioid overdoses in 2022 for which a toxicology screen took place.
"In years past in this epidemic, overdose prevention and overdose response had a little bit more time to allow your family [or] the medical community to intervene," Gaeta said at a briefing hosted by the Mass. Medical Society. "That time window has shortened dramatically in the fentanyl era. We really need to be with someone at the point of use."
The society endorsed legislation (H 1981 / S 1242) that would create a pilot program standing up overdose prevention centers, provide staff in those facilities with legal protections, and require data collection to monitor their success.
Lawmakers have declined to advance similar legislation in several sessions, and the Healey administration in June ordered a new analysis to examine the "feasibility" of such sites.
Written By Chris Lisinski/SHNS
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