Svante Myrick, the mayor of Ithaca, New York, is planning to set up a supervised injection facility for drug users. The project is part of his multipoint strategy which aims to address the city's drug problem in a more holistic manner.
In a press statement shared to ABC News on Tuesday, Myrick indicated that the proposed facility would limit the spread of infectious diseases as well as reduce incarceration rates and overdose deaths. That's because patients will be closely monitored when they use drugs.
"While much of drug policy is driven at the state and federal level, there is a great deal that municipalities can do to create more effective drug policies," Myrick explained.
He added that lawmakers should be open to new ways of curbing the harmful effects of drugs in the community. The 28-year-old Democrat based his idea on preexisting European health policies.
Addiction psychiatrist Christina Delos Reyes supports the move. She believes such facility would greatly benefit drug users who have previously failed all other treatments.
Delos Reyes is glad that lawmakers are slowly getting convinced that drug use is a health issue rather than an illegal act. She said lawmakers who still aren't convinced should "start looking at this as a public health problem instead of as a crime and moral failing."
As of the moment, more than 20 countries have implemented measures to decriminalize drug use. In the US, a recent poll by the Drug Policy Alliance showed that 61 percent of New Hampshire voters want the government to stop arresting people for drug use and possession.
Treatment Research Institute founder A. Thomas McLellan told NPR that there is strong scientific evidence suggesting drug addiction is a form of brain disease. This idea is still relatively unpopular since brain science has just started to emerge as a new school of thought.
"It's got the same genetic transmutability as a lot of chronic illnesses," McLellan reasoned. "And the organ that it affects is the brain, and within the brain it is motivation, inhibition, cognition, all those things that produce the aberrant, unpleasant behaviors that are associated with addiction."
