A proposal in Springfield would allow state-licensed drug injection sites to open across Illinois in an effort to reduce fatal overdoses amid a nationwide opioid crisis that has hit Cook County particularly hard.
The proposal to allow people to use drugs at state-approved sites is part of a larger push to treat the opioid crisis as a public health problem, rather than a criminal justice issue. Chelsea Laliberte Barnes, co-founder of the Illinois Harm Reduction and Recovery Coalition, said Illinoisans "need treatment, not punishment for being a human being."
Under Ford’s bill, the Illinois Department of Human Services would create a "Harm Reduction Services license" that would be issued for safe sites. "Because of her," Ford said of his mother, "I know better about how to help save lives and why we have to support people with substance use disorder and not throw them away."
"Three years later, when we are now looking at the second year in a row where we have as a county and as a nation an unprecedented number of people dying of opioid overdoses, the reality is we have to do something different," she said.
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