Vermont lawmakers have officially approved amendments to limit the scope of a House-passed Safe Consumption Sites (SCS) bill, which, as amended, would create and fund a facility in Burlington where others could simply use currently banned substances, as part of a pilot program aimed at alleviating the existing overdose crisis.
After passing a committee on April 18, the Senate Health and Welfare Committee voted 3-2 to move forward with H. 72. On April 19, the Finance Committee also voted 4-2 to pass the bill and send it to the Senate for approval. consideration. As of April 23, it had obtained favorable reports from two Senate committees.
“H. 72 is anything that we’ve done a little bit of work on,” Sen. Virginia “Ginny” Lyons (D), who chairs the Senate Health and Wellness Committee, said at a hearing before her panel voted.
As passed by the House in January, the bill would have created two SCSs in undeclared parts of the state, with $2 million set aside for facility funding, plus an additional $300,000 to evaluate the pilot’s effect.
As amended, $1. 1 million would be allocated to the single-site project in Burlington, with the full $300,000 going toward the study of the program.
The Ministry of Health is expected to identify operational rules for the new program, which would include titles and qualifications for staff, by Sept. 15.
Many of the new provisions in the Health and Welfare Committee’s surprising amendment came about at the request of a number of stakeholders, including the mayor and fire department of Burlington and the Vermont Medical Society, as well as Lyons, whose district is south of Burlington.
After discussing the bill in past hearings, the panel considered the most recent changes before the vote, adding reinstatement to an explanation in the House edition that SCS can be just constant or cellular services, adding the requirement that grant programs will have to get from the City. Approval by the Council, as well as much smaller technical adjustments.
The committee’s revisions largely restructured the bill’s language to separate the SCS provisions in one segment and the provisions on the expansion of the bill’s proposed needle service program (SSP) in another.
The APS segment would provide $1. 45 million to fund HIV systems and harm relief facilities through grants through Sept. 1. That cash would come from the state’s opioid settlement fund. The committee’s most recent draft also eliminated another $400,000 that would have been paid to the state general despite the reluctance of Sens. Ruth Hardy (D-Calif. ) and Martine Larocque Gulick (D-Calif. ). Lyons, the president, said cash may still be set aside in the state budget process.
“I don’t feel comfortable giving up those decisions in the hallway, because this committee has done the work, and I in particular have done a lot of work on this issue, and I don’t accept as true the decisions made on time-space, frankly,” Hardy said.
“We’ll see what happens,” Lyons replied. Everyone needs to do the best they can. “
At Lyon’s request, they discussed the provision of on-site drug facilities to the participants. Meanwhile, an added review at the request of the Burlington Fire Department requires on-site experts to receive training in CPR, overdose response, first aid and wound care, as well as conduct medical tests to determine the need for additional care.
At a hearing in early April, Lyons noted that the amendment lacked further SCS language in the future.
“In a way, we’re restricting it to Burlington,” he said. In the future. . . There is nothing here that allows for an expansion, if there is budget available. »
However, when the Health and Welfare Committee reviewed the bill on April 12, Lyons also noted that the new language “prevents” other SCSs from being legal at a later date.
The revised bill also includes tailored provisions on the legal immunity of CPS personnel, asset holders, and others, so that they are not subject to arrest or prosecution as a result of good faith efforts to prevent overdoses.
If the bill becomes law, Vermont would join Rhode Island and Minnesota as the third state to allow SCS.
Sponsored by Rep. Taylor Small (L/D) and 28 House colleagues, the bill is an attempt by lawmakers to authorize CPS following Gov. Phil Scott’s (R) veto of a 2022 measure that would have established a task force to create a plan. to open the sites.
Even if the bill passes the Senate during this session, it will still face a conceivable veto from the governor.
“I just don’t think any government entity has a bill to allow addicts to those illegal drugs,” the governor said of the existing measure that passed the House in 2024.
Scott wrote in his 2022 veto message about an earlier law that “it is contradictory to divert resources from demonstrated harm relief methods to planning injection sites without transparent knowledge about the effectiveness of this approach. “
Prior to the Senate committee’s vote, members heard testimony and obtained written comments from various officials and organizations at various hearings.
In one of the most recent meetings, Burlington’s new mayor, Emma Mulvaney-Stanak, who took office in April, said that, like outgoing Mayor Miro Weinberger, “I also strongly support H. 72 and the path it offers our citizens. “The City of Burlington will be piloting an overdose prevention center in our community.
“They can’t prevent dangerous drug use and harms related to it. However, evidence shows that they can be remarkably effective.
Weinberger, who addressed the panel at an earlier hearing, said addressing the overdose crisis has been the most sensible precedent in the city since 2015.
“I’ve long supported overdose prevention sites as a strategy,” he said. “I’m getting more and more specific and I think more and more that this is something we want to do urgently. “
The proposal has advocacy teams such as the Drug Policy Alliance, Law Enforcement Action Partnership, National Harm Reduction Coalition, American Diabetes Association, Planned Parenthood of Northern New England, Johnson Health Center, Broken No More, Recovery Vermont, the Vermont Association for Addiction Recovery and Mental Health, as well as various individual public commentators.
The National Center for Harm Reduction, for example, has called SCS “a component of a comprehensive public conditioning technique to reduce the harms of drug use. “
“They cannot save the dangerous use of drugs and the harms related to them,” the organization said in its testimony. “However, knowledge shows that they can be remarkably effective and cost-effective, and the lives of others who use drugs, as well as the protection and health of our communities. “
Prior to the amendments, some state officials told the committee that SCS is not the ideal solution for rural Vermont.
“My position is that while I recognize that [SCS] can have many potential benefits and be part of a multi-pronged strategy for the opioid epidemic, they may not constitute the most productive option for a state like Vermont at this time. “Mark Levine, commissioner of Vermont’s Health Breakdown, said in his testimony before the committee’s changes: that amenities seem more productive “where the other people who want those facilities can access them seamlessly and temporarily; Those are spaces with higher populations. “Neighborhoods where injection drug use is more prevalent.
New York City, he noted, has its two SCSs in spaces that are compatible with that description.
“Half-measures don’t do us any good. “
Rep. Eric Maguire (right), who also opposed the bill, argued at the previous hearing that while SCS will be an appropriate option for Vermont in the future, the state lately doesn’t have the infrastructure to make the task worthwhile. He also noted that those sites may simply violate federal law.
“Right now, the state of Vermont doesn’t have the infrastructure or the ongoing care for this harm relief model,” he told the panel. “It’s not sanctioned through SAMHSA. . . It opposes the law under the Controlled Substances Act. “
“There may come a time when they will be sanctioned by our national fitness organizations and sanctioned under harm relief laws,” he added, “and then we can think about crossing that bridge. “
Weinberger, a former mayor of Burlington, told panel members that SCS not only prevents overdose deaths, but also connects other people who use drugs to treatment and other services, helping others who can’t participate in other outreach.
“An understated point in the debate is that studies show that those services decrease — not only do they not increase, but they decrease — crime and riots in the immediate vicinity of services,” he said. “I think that surprises a lot of people. “
Weinberger said the sites may not work in all areas of Vermont, especially more rural areas, but said that doesn’t explain why rejecting facilities in denser areas like Burlington.
Meanwhile, Scott Pavek, a substance use policy analyst for the city of Burlington and a member of the state’s Opioid Regulatory Advisory Committee and Substance Abuse Prevention Council, suggested lawmakers be complacent about the existing overdose crisis.
“Recently, this committee heard testimony suggesting that overdose deaths in the state have stagnated,” he said, wary of “the rush to point to a still-unacceptable number of Vermonters lost to preventable overdose deaths as evidence that our methods of reparation and harm relief are sufficient. “
A saying heard during his own recovery, Pavek added, is that “half-measures don’t do us any good. “
Although Rhode Island and Minnesota allowed SCS, New York City was the first U. S. jurisdiction to open them.
Separately, in April, the Vermont Senate passed a measure that would identify a task force to examine whether and how to allow healing access to psychedelics in the state. If the bill passes, a report from the working group with recommendations will be presented to Parliament in November. about how to use those substances. As originally introduced, this bill would have also legalized the use and ownership of psilocybin, however, lawmakers on the Senate Health and Wellness Committee rejected that segment to focus on the task force.
Although Rhode Island and Minnesota have state legislation allowing SCS, New York City was the first U. S. jurisdiction to do so. The U. S. Department of Health and Human Services opened them in November 2021, and officials have reported positive, life-saving results.
The American Medical Association found that the amenities reduced overdoses and drug use in public, provided a variety of ancillary skills to participants, and led to fewer arrests without expanding “crime. “
Meanwhile, the federal government has been bidding to open an SCS in Philadelphia. In early April, the court in charge of the case granted the Justice Department’s motion to dismiss the organizers’ challenge.
The Supreme Court rejected a request to hear the case in October 2021.
First, the Justice Department blocked the Philadelphia-based nonprofit from opening the Trump administration’s SCS. Supporters had hoped the branch would cede factor under President Joe Biden, who has supported some harm relief policies, but the parties were unable to succeed. in an agreement to allow the facility to open despite months of “good faith” negotiations.
Congressional scholars have pointed to the “uncertainty” of the federal government’s position on such facilities, noting in November 2023 that lawmakers could temporarily meet the challenge by proposing an amendment modeled after one that would allow medical marijuana legislation to be implemented without interference from the Department of Justice.
Meanwhile, the director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, Nora Volkow, has tacitly endorsed the concept of allowing SCS, arguing that evidence has shown that amenities can prevent overdose deaths.
Volkow declined to say in particular what he thinks will happen with the ongoing trial, but said studies have shown that SCS has “saved a [significant percentage of] patients from an overdose. “
Photo via Photo Claude TRUONG-NGOC Wikimedia Commons/Creative Commons 3. 0
This story was originally published through Marijuana Moment, which tracks hashish and drug policies and policies. Follow Marijuana Moment on Twitter and Facebook, and sign up for their newsletter.
Ben has been a hash editor and publisher since 2011, and also serves as a senior editor at Leafly. He is currently the editor-in-chief of Marijuana Moment.