Please Invest in Treatment on Demand (A final NO to SCS!)

Dear Seattle City Council,

I appreciate Councilmember Bagshaw’s quote in the Seattle Times regarding safe injection sites:  “The pragmatic alternative is to invest in treatment on demand.”  (https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/homeless/threat-of-federal-enforcement-complicates-seattles-proposed-safe-injection-site/ )

Despite two years of noise at city hall and the plastering of consumption ads throughout our neighborhoods, this has always been the case. Seattle voters are relying on you to re-focus on realistic, effective solutions that do not drain continued time, money and civic energy into polarizing, high liability, non-scalable efforts.

Imagine if:

• Seattle directed energy to a widely supported concept like a 24-hour sobering center (instead of focusing on the highly controversial Safe Consumption Site concept, which is drawing negative federal attention our way). If people are barred from a sanctioned camp or unable to shelter themselves due to substance abuse, we would have a safe alternative beyond a drippy tent or dangerous street corner.
  
  Can we be like Baltimore?  https://health.baltimorecity.gov/baltimore-city-stabilization-center

• Seattle / King County ERs offered immediate access to MAT for overdose patients. As I learned at a Ballard meeting on 8/23/18, according to Brad Finegood with King County Behavioral Health, current OD patients in Seattle continue to be offered hands-off referrals with wait times (heading right back out to their next hit). At that same meeting, a nurse from Ballard Neighborcare talked about how buprenorphine protects people from overdose for 48 hours, whereas Narcan immediately dissipates (she said people can even overdose twice from the same hit of drugs, because the drugs are much longer lasting than the Narcan). Why are we not publicizing MAT and making it widely, immediately available, especially in ERs?
  
  Can we be like New York? https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/18/health/opioid-addiction-treatment.html

The more suffering and disorder we see spreading throughout our community, the more we wonder: Can we be like Rhode Island?https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/08/25/rhode-island-opioids-inmates-219594 Like Vermont? https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/10/30/16339672/opioid-epidemic-vermont-hub-spoke Like New Hampshire? https://www.nashuanh.gov/1109/Safe-Stations

Pete Holmes, as quoted in the Seattle Times, is gravely mistaken when he continues to assume that people who are opposed to Safe Consumption Sites are misinformed, lacking compassion, or clinging to the War on Drugs. Consumption sites are not a proven model*, especially given our uniquely unsteady state of public safety and criminal justice reform and the limited health options available to our populace.

The attached photo is of a fellow I spoke with on a quiet Monday morning in Ballard, after stopping to put air in my tires at a 7-11. He was sitting in full public view on the street corner, stripping wires and picking at open sores on his legs, “rinsing” them with sticky red alcoholic beverage. Those aren’t his shoes. Someone had stolen his and replaced them with a pair that didn’t fit. As a mom with a stocked minivan, I was able to offer him a bottle of fresh water, Neosporin and band-aids, and I continually encouraged him to visit Neighborcare, just blocks away, where (few people realize) low-barrier treatment is immediately available. I am very thankful our neighborhood has MAT and a wide range of supportive services, NOT a consumption site (where he would continue slowly killing himself and harming the community). I was able to text an outreach worker paid for by our local businesses (via Ballard Alliance), but she is spread very thin. We need help conveying that our community priority is immediate access to treatment and supportive care, throughout Seattle and King County.

No more “Safer is Better” — Seattleites deserve “Help is Available Now!”

Step outside the ideological bubble that is suffocating city hall and please make it happen.

Sincerely,

Angie Gerrald

Ballard, WA

Member of Speak Out Seattle!

www.speakoutseattle.com

https://www.facebook.com/groups/Speak.out.seattle/

* https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2018/8/22/17683364/safe-injection-sites-study , https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/world/2018-04-16/opioids-masses(http://spl.libanswers.com/loader.php?fid=687681&type=0&key=fbd757e1197977482b82567e4390986c )