DOWN THE HALL from the supervised injection room at Insite, there’s a mostly unused space that years ago was haphazardly filled with boxes.
Unique for a storage space, it’s outfitted to accommodate heavy air-handling units powerful enough to create negative room pressure.
Over coffee earlier this summer, Portland Hotel Society (PHS) cofounder and former executive director Mark Townsendexplained that Insite was originally planned to provide services to a variety of drug users. The room stuffed with boxes was designed as a place where people addicted to crack cocaine could smoke the drug in conditions that minimize risks of fatal overdose and infection, he said.
“We were working on it,” Townsend added. “We got a quote to set the room up, we got an architecture drawing ready for the tenant improvement for the space, we even had meetings about whether it would be captured in the nicotine smoking rules or not. But really getting it done, the big impediment was obviously the federal government.”
Travis Lupick
Straight.com
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