This month, lawmakers in Sacramento inched closer to legalizing safe consumption sites in a handful of California jurisdictions.

• By a vote of 5-2, members of the Senate Public Safety committee approved SB57, which would allow counties to approve entities to operate overdose prevention programs that include “providing a hygienic space supervised by trained staff where people who use drugs can consume preobtained drugs providing sterile consumption supplies.”
• Meanwhile, DHS has taken an important step toward integrating safe consumption sites into patient care. The department recently adopted an “expected practices” for all DHS medical practitioners around safe consumption for patients who use drugs.

ODR has been on the forefront of leading harm reduction efforts across the county. Click through to watch our team at work distributing more than 140,000 doses of life-saving medication, which reversed at least 9,100 accidental overdoses in recent years.