A mayor wants space where addicts can inject heroin safely

ALBANY, N.Y. – The mayor of Ithaca wants his city in upstate New York to host the nation’s first supervised injection facility, enabling heroin users to shoot illegal drugs into their bodies under the care of a nurse without getting arrested by police.

The son of an addict who abandoned his family, Ithaca Mayor Svante Myrick is only 28 years old, but knows intimately how destructive drugs can be. As he worked his way from a homeless shelter into the Ivy League at Cornell University and then became Ithaca’s youngest mayor four years ago, Myrick encountered countless people who never got the help they needed.

“I have watched for 20 years this system that just doesn’t work,” Myrick explained in an Associated Press interview. “We can’t wait anymore for the federal government. We have people shooting up in alleys. In bathroom stalls. And too many of them are dying.”

Describing his proposals to the AP ahead of a formal announcement planned for Wednesday, the mayor said creating a place where addicts can inject heroin safely is a key part of a holistic approach to drug abuse that Ithaca will be rolling out, one that treats addiction more like a public health issue than a problem for the criminal justice system to solve. Nurses or physicians could quickly administer an antidote if a user overdoses, while addicts also could get clean syringes and be directed to treatment and recovery programs, he said.

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