Vermont Governor Phil Scott has vetoed Bill H.72, which would have initiated a pilot overdose prevention center in Burlington, Vermont’s largest city. At OPCs, those living with substance use or co-occurring disorders are offered clean needles, access to life-saving resources, access to support groups, and qualitative care from medical professionals in the case of an overdose as well as STI, HIV/ AIDs, and Hepatitis testing.

Governor Scott, a Republican, argued in a letter to lawmakers that while well-intentioned, “this costly experiment will divert financial resources from proven prevention, treatment, and recovery strategies.” The Democratic-controlled Legislature is expected to attempt an override next month.

The proposed legislation, which focuses on a harm-reduction response to illicit drug use, would allocate $1.1 million from the Opioid Abatement Special Fund to the Vermont Department of Health. This fund is part of Vermont’s share of a national settlement with drug manufacturers and distributors. The bill required the Health Department to hire a researcher to study the pilot program’s impact. The center would also have provided referrals to addiction treatment and other medical and social services, education about overdose prevention, and distributed overdose reversal medications.

Senate President Pro Tem Phil Baruth emphasized the urgent need for such a center, citing the “dramatic rise in fatal overdoses over the past ten years.” He argued that overdose prevention centers save lives, connect people to treatment, reduce pressures on emergency services, and decrease public drug use.

Governor Scott vetoed a similar bill two years ago. He maintains that the funds earmarked for the facility would be better spent on existing strategies like Narcan distribution, fentanyl testing strips, needle exchanges, and enhanced prevention and recovery efforts through local coalitions.

The Impact of Overdose Prevention Centers: Lessons from New York

Since November 2021, two Overdose Prevention Centers (OPCs) in East Harlem and Washington Heights have been visited 140,633 times by 5,127 individuals, intervening in 1,538 overdoses, according to OnPoint NYC. Crucially, every individual who overdosed at these centers survived due to the medical staff’s intervention.

New York City initially estimated these centers would only save between 100 and 130 lives annually. Within three months of opening, they had already surpassed the projected figures. The centers have also improved the local community’s quality of life, significantly reducing discarded syringes from 13,000 to approximately 1,000 per month. To date, they have collected 2.5 million units of hazardous waste.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, over 100,000 Americans died from drug overdoses between May 2020 and April 2021. Of these, about 75,000 deaths were due to opioids like fentanyl. In 2020, over 2,000 New Yorkers died of overdoses, exceeding deaths from homicides, suicides, and motor vehicle crashes combined.

Understanding Overdose Prevention Centers

OPCs are facilities where individuals can safely use their own drugs under medical supervision, which prevents deaths from overdoses, reduces the spread of diseases like HIV and hepatitis C, and offers various harm reduction services, including naloxone administration, fentanyl testing strips, xylazine testing strips, and referrals to treatment centers. The first OPCs emerged in the Netherlands in the early 1970s, with the first North American site in Vancouver showing a 35% reduction in local overdose deaths.

Studies by the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA) indicate that OPCs provide safer use for clients and broader public health benefits. These include fewer drug-related deaths, reduced public disorder, and decreased costs from lowered disease rates and emergency medical services use.

Despite some opposition, OPCs have not been linked to increased crime; rather, they have reduced public disorder and encounters with police. Areas with OPCs see fewer arrests for minor drug offenses, demonstrating a shift from punitive measures to harm reduction. With 120 OPCs operating globally, there has not been a single overdose fatality at these facilities, according to the Drug Policy Alliance.

As the nation faces a fentanyl-driven overdose crisis, with overdose deaths among young people rising sharply, the need for OPCs becomes ever more pressing. Far too many lives are lost to preventable overdoses, and immediate action is required to integrate more OPCs into our communities.

Call 988 to reach the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline. It provides free and confidential support 24 hours a day, seven days a week for people in suicidal crisis or distress. You can learn more about its services here, including its guide on what to do if you see suicidal language on social media. You can also call that number to talk to someone about how you can help a person in crisis. For crisis support in Spanish, call 1-888-628-9454.

For support outside of the US, a worldwide directory of resources and international hotlines is provided by the International Association for Suicide Prevention. You can also turn to Befrienders Worldwide.

Help is Available

If you or someone you love is living with substance use, alcohol misuse, a co-occurring, or a behavioral health disorder, there is hope. The Break Free Foundation aids individuals seeking recovery through the Break Free Scholarship Fund. It sends anyone who lacks the financial resources to attend a recovery center to do so at low to no cost.

Review our Treatment Locator Tool to find the right program near you, as well as our list of Hotlines and Helplines. Click here for a list of regional and national resources. On this road to recovery, no one is alone. We are all in this together.