STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- “Gifting money to heroin shooting galleries that only encourage drug use and deteriorate our quality of life is an egregious abuse of taxpayer dollars,” Rep. Nicole Malliotakis (R-Staten Island/South Brooklyn) said about the city’s safe injection sites.
Congresswoman Malliotakis introduced legislation in the House on Wednesday that would prevent city, state, tribal or private entities from receiving federal funding to operate supervised injection sites – also called overdose prevention centers (OPC).
The congresswoman has attempted to block Mayor Bill de Blasio’s plans to open OPCs in New York City for the past few years.
Upon Malliotakis’ request to former Attorney General and head of the Department of Justice (DOJ) Jeff Sessions, under the Trump Administration, the DOJ committed to intervene if the city opened any safe injection sites.
Following the two first-in-the-nation safe injection sites opening in the Manhattan neighborhoods of East Harlem and Washington Heights on Nov. 30, the congresswoman wrote a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland requesting she take action against the OPCs.
“Now that Mayor de Blasio has gone forward with these plans, I’ve called on the Biden Administration to take the same course of action. If they don’t, I’ve introduced this legislation to ensure any federal funds sent to entities that operate these unlawful facilities are stripped for good,” Malliotakis said in the press release.
The congresswoman also sent a letter to New York State Attorney General Letitia James, on Wednesday, requesting James take action at the state level and shut down the sites.
“We’ve already identified millions of federal dollars that have been sent to these facilities. Gifting money to heroin shooting galleries that only encourage drug use and deteriorate our quality of life is an egregious abuse of taxpayer dollars,” Malliotakis continued.
ARE SAFE INJECTION SITES LEGAL?
In January, a week before Biden’s inauguration, the DOJ touted a federal appellate court’s 2-1 decision against a similar site, that was set to be operated by non-profit organization Safehouse in Philadelphia.
Their decision reversed a district court ruling, and the Supreme Court declined to hear the case in October, effectively ending the litigation.
One of the justices who ruled against the site pointed to a section of federal law against “maintaining drug-involved premises.” The legislation that made it law passed in 1986 as a way to shut down “crack houses.”
The majority opinion conceded that point, but still found the law, as written, prohibited the operation of safe injection sites.
“Though the opioid crisis may call for innovative solutions, local innovations may not break federal law,” Judge Stephanos Bibas, who was appointed by former President Donald Trump, wrote in the majority opinion.
“Although Congress passed [legislation] to shut down crack houses, its words reach well beyond them. Safehouse’s benevolent motive makes no difference.”
Senior Judge Jane Roth’s dissenting opinion had significant similarities to de Blasio’s characterization of the sites that have already begun operating in East Harlem and Washington Heights.
“In other words, Safehouse is a drug treatment facility that also seeks to provide much needed overdose care to drug users,” the judge, who President George H.W. Bush appointed, wrote in her opinion. “If these users are denied access to a Consumption Room, they will still use drugs -- and possibly die on the street.”
Despite the ruling in Philadelphia, Mayor de Blasio is confident that the city’s two OPCs are legal.
The mayor said the city Law Department’s review of the relevant federal law found that it was focused on drug trafficking not medical facilities, which is how he characterized the two sites that are located in non-profit-run existing needle exchanges.
“These are facilities specifically created to save lives,” he said during a morning media briefing last week. “They are exactly what we say they are, and we believe that actually is allowable.”