Congresswoman Katherine Clark supports the idea of opening facilities where people can use illegal drugs under medical supervision to prevent overdose fatalities and refer people to treatment for drug addiction when they are ready.

“These sites, in particular, if it is saving some lives, if it is allowing us to have the intervention to stop this cycle before a person does lose their life to an overdose, that’s a piece of this puzzle that we have to be open to and figure out,” said Clark.

Support for supervised drug injection sites has grown since US District Court Judge Gerald McHugh ruled earlier this month that a provision of the Controlled Substances Act aimed at closing crack houses did not apply to a proposed supervised injection site in Philadelphia. 

“No credible argument can be made that facilities such as safe injection sites were within the contemplation of Congress” when the initial drug law was adopted in 1986 or when it was amended in 2003, McHugh ruled.

But here in Massachusetts, US Attorney Andrew Lelling has not been dissuaded by the federal court decision. He said he would use his prosecutorial powers to prevent any supervised injection sites from opening.

In  a wide-ranging interview on CommonWealth’s Codcast, Clark also talked about her work on a bill  dubbed the BE HEARD in the Workplace Act, which would take a number of different approaches to empower the victims of workplace sexual harassment and try to curb the type of predation made infamous by the torrent of #metoo stories over the past two years.

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Original story here.