Judge ruling - Philadelphia Safe Injection Site Does Not Violate Federal Law

[Jim Allen]

Fits in multiple sections of the forum but decided to post here, anyhow harm reduction is key and this is good news although very sad it was challenged to begin with and that the DoJ has indicated they will appeal

https://www.poz.com/article/philadelphia-safe-injection-site-violate-federal-law

Philadelphia Safe Injection Site Does Not Violate Federal Law

Philadelphia Safe Injection Site Does Not Violate Federal Law
Judge’s ruling may pave the way for opening the nation’s first supervised overdose prevention facility.

A federal judge has struck down the government’s latest attempt to block the opening of what could become the first supervised injection site in the United States.

On October 2, U.S. District Judge Gerald McHugh ruled that Philadelphia’s proposed Safehouse facility does not violate the so-called crack house provision of the federal Controlled Substances Act, which makes it a crime to operate a site where illegal drugs are produced, distributed or consumed.

“We have maintained that the federal laws couldn’t possibly be interpreted to stop people from saving other people’s lives,” Ronda Goldfein, Safehouse vice president and director of the AIDS Law Project of Pennsylvania, told the Philadelphia Inquirer.

Indeed, Judge McHugh concluded in his ruling that there was no credible argument that Congress was considering safe injection sites when it adopted the crack house rule in 1986, as “their use as a possible harm reduction strategy among opioid users had not yet entered public discourse.”

The Department of Justice (DoJ) indicated that it would appeal the decision.