Colorado - Colorado Moderate Democrats Joined with Republicans Defeat Injection Sites Bill
In an interesting bill for retail property owners in Colorado, and communities across Colorado, this bill was defeated primally due to the lack of state oversight on these sites. Clearly our stations in certain communities have issue with drug use and the use of these substances jeopardize our employees. That said the prevalence of these sites, especially with no prohibition from setbacks from schools, diminish the property value of surrounding locations. But it was defeated so these are not happening at least for a little while.
Denver ordinance authorized supervised injection sites in 2018, awaiting state approval.
Proponents seeking to establish supervised drug injection sites in Colorado saw their latest effort in a years-long battle meet a bitter end Wednesday evening.
House Bill 1202 sought to give municipalities the power to allow sites in their communities where people could use illegal drugs under supervision of medical professionals, which backers of the policy said would prevent overdoses. The sites could offer needed medical care, sterile drug equipment, test drugs for fentanyl and could connect users to counseling and other treatment.
The Democrat-sponsored bill easily cleared the House in a 43-21 vote last month, but was killed by a Senate committee Wednesday night in a 6-3 vote.
"In spite of today’s vote, overdose prevention centers remain the public health gold standard for addressing the crisis of overdose deaths faced by too many Colorado families," said the Colorado Drug Policy Coalition, which pushed for the bill, in a statement. "We are proud of the leadership from our many members in the House and our sponsors in the Senate who were able to put good policy backed by decades of research ahead of the politics of inaction."
Critics of the bill argued that supervised injection sites enable drug abuse without addressing the causes of addiction, and feared they would decrease property values and increase crime in the areas where they're established.
“I am grateful to the Senate for putting an end to this poorly thought out bill before it created more Colorado opioid tragedies in our state," said House Minority Leader Mike Lynch, R-Wellington. "HB 1202 would have misused tax dollars to facilitate the use of illicit drugs and extended the nightmare for those struggling with drug addiction.”
The idea of supervised injection sites has floated around the Colorado Capitol since 2017, when an interim committee introduced a measure to allow a pilot site in Denver. That measure was quickly rejected in 2018 by a committee in the Republican-majority Senate. The next year, Democrats took control of both the House and Senate but declined to bring back the bill.
Democrats this year have near unprecedented control of the state legislature, outnumbering Republicans 69 to 31. But HB 1202 did not have unanimous support from the majority caucus.
In the Senate Health and Human Services Committee, three Democrats joined the committee's three Republicans in voting to kill the bill: Sens. Kyle Mullica, Lisa Cutter and Joann Ginal. Cutter, D-Littleton, previously expressed support for the bill and said she was voting to kill it "reluctantly," seemingly because it already did not have enough support to pass.
Mullica, D-Thornton, and Ginal, D-Fort Collins, raised concerns about enabling drug use and inconsistent regulations and implementations from site to site, as there would be no licensing or parameters from the state.
"I don't believe someone should die because they have a drug addiction. But, at the same time, I want to see what is going to be the most effective," Mullica said in committee. "The policies we put forward, we need to make sure that they're going to be to the best of their ability. ... People are dying and we have to do something. I'm just not there on this policy."
Proponents of the bill championed it as being pro-local control. The bill would not require communities to establish supervised injection sites and local leaders would have to hold a public meeting before being able to set a site up.
Currently, only Denver has an ordinance authorizing a pilot program for supervised injection sites. That ordinance was passed by the city council back in 2018, but a state law change is still needed to allow municipalities to authorize them.
"This was the right policy to make it local control. We all talk about how much we want to let local communities guide the policy in their communities," said Sen. Sonya Jaquez Lewis, D-Longmont, while voting against killing the bill on Wednesday. "Communities are in need. ... This is a tool that would help so many people that are trying to save their lives and the lives of loved ones."
Democratic Sens. Faith Winter of Westminster and Rhonda Fields of Aurora also voted not to kill the bill in committee.
This latest effort comes as, for the first time ever, drug overdoses killed more than 100,000 people across the U.S. in 2021, according to a CNN report citing the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Life expectancy in Colorado has dropped since 2019, driven by overdose deaths and COVID-19, according to the state health department.
HB 1202 was backed by nearly three dozen organizations and local governments, including the Harm Reduction Action Center, Colorado Municipal League, Mental Health Colorado, Colorado Coalition for the Homeless, Colorado Nurses Association, Colorado Psychiatric Society, the city of Boulder and the city of Northglenn.
Ten groups registered in opposition to the bill, including the Colorado Association of Chiefs of Police, the County Sheriffs of Colorado and the cities of Colorado Springs, Aurora, Brighton, Fountain and Monument.
The Colorado Drug Policy Coalition said it plans to continue fighting to bring supervised injection sites to the state.
"While we lacked the votes in committee today, we are hopeful that we may find the wisdom to see this through in the next session and we remain committed to this fight," the coalition said.