A bill for an ordinance authorizing a supervised use site pilot program contingent upon the state General Assembly passing legislation authorizing the operation of supervised use sites in the state of Colorado. The Committee approved filing this item at its meeting on 11-7-18.
with Winter Park. Thank you. Thank you, Councilman Ortega. Madam Secretary, please for the next item on our screens. And Councilwoman Canete, will you please put Council Bill 1292 on the floor? Yes, I move that council bill 1218 Dash 1290 to be placed upon final consideration and you pass. It has been moved and seconded questions or comments by members of Council Councilman Flynn. Thank you, Mr. President. Yes, I called this out as I did last week because I intend to vote no on it again. And I want to just explain a little bit about the week between last Monday and today. And I said last week that this was probably the most difficult vote I've ever faced up here in a three plus years because of the the very serious life and death issues that it involves that don't usually attend to our our normal business. Over the intervening week, I've heard from numerous constituents, some of whom have stopped me, actually, my wife and me at a at a restaurant over the weekend, a woman who just put her son into drug rehab at a cost of $25,000, who begged me not to not to vote for this because of her fear that had there been such a site available to her son, she might he might not have chosen to go into rehab when he did. Whether that's true or not, that's that's that's what she believed. So I voted last week against it and I intend to vote no also. And I wanted to explain a little more. We like to make data driven decisions. And in this, as with a lot of our our issues, there's a lot of data available, but it's raw data. And some of it's not sliced and diced and analyzed very, very usefully. For us, it's not you know, a good regression analysis would really help here to say to help us know whether these facilities around the world are actually reducing the opioid crisis when it's occurring in an atmosphere where there's other factors that are creating a surge in deaths and a surge in usage. It's hard to know what is the right path forward. And so we like to think that data tells us what to do. It leads us in a certain direction. And a lot of times that's just not so. There has to be human judgment. If data alone could tell us what the right thing to do is. You wouldn't need 13 of us up here. You could just feed it into a computer and we'll tell you what the right policy choices. Don't get any ideas about that, by the way, not replacing us with a computer. But there has to be human judgment that that is applied to this data. And so I want to say at the outset, Mr. President, that I have great respect for every single one of my colleagues who voted the other way last week and who will vote that way tonight, because they've applied their judgment as well to the facts and have reached what I consider an equally valid course of action to do. And it's just not one that I can that I can personally support. But I do want to say that I have great respect for the judgment of my colleagues who have applied to this. But I also want to say that my judgment on this is that it's not the path that I think this city ought to be taking to establish a designated area where dangerous drugs, illegal drugs, heroin can be consumed. I don't make this judgment based on any inaccurate reading of the data, nor out of any pretense that it's not occurring on our streets or near alleys or in our parks. I have it in my own district. I'm fully aware of this. And as I said last week, I've had several overdose deaths just within a stone's throw of my office in Bear Valley. So I'm fully aware that this is happening on the streets. I've simply concluded that a supervised injection site isn't the way to combat the crisis. I think it enables it without reducing it. This is a two year pilot program. We end the two years with, let's say there are no overdose deaths, as we fully expect, because I don't think there's been one in any of these facilities around the world. So what's the end game? Does that mean, Mr. President, that we will then put a facility such as this in every district in the city or everywhere where we've experienced opioid deaths? Is that the way to really prevent the deaths is to put these safe injection facilities elsewhere in the city if this pilot program proves successful. I believe, though, if we want to be more effective instead of establishing a safe use site, I think we should follow the lead that the state of Utah has taken, and that is with a very robust distribution, free distribution of naloxone, of Narcan kits to the communities that are affected by this, to the providers, to nonprofits, to family members, family members whose sons, brothers, sisters, daughters, mothers are struggling with addiction, provide them and prevent that. That's where they're occurring. And don't expect them to come down to a single site, but go out to the to the bike paths and the parks and the library and the the public restrooms where we know where we've had these things occurring. And I think that would be much more effective. I could fully support a program like that. You know, it's been stated that addiction is a disease, not necessarily a crime, but the addiction itself is a disease. And we don't criminalize a disease. Cancer patients don't have to do chemo in an alley. But then again, this is in treatment. A safe injection site is not treatment. It's like bringing a lung cancer patient into a smoking room and giving them more cigarets this is not treatment. If this bill offered more in the way of an aggressive path toward treatment and resolving the addiction for the individual client, I could be more supportive of it, but a supervised injection room enables continued addiction and not a treatment. And for that reason, reluctantly, after weighing all of the options, reluctantly, Mr. President, have to vote no. So thank you. Thank you, Councilman Flynn. Councilman. Thank you, Mr. Rosa. I also love to hear from my constituents as well and all the key issues that we face. A council I normally survey my constituents and I did on the supervised injection. As well, had 665 of my constituents in District ten responded. Just want to share a little bit of their data with you. What was their feeling about reducing drug deaths and combating illegal drug use as a priority for the city? Over 76% of the residents who responded said yes, it is a priority reducing deaths as well as fighting drug illegal drug distribution. Do you support the supervised injection site in Denver? 56% of my Rosas responders said, yes, we do support the drug addiction center. The question is, in addition, should we wait until we make sure the Colorado approves such a program as we submit our program? And that's what the plan is, that Colorado will need to pass that legislation first. And the last thing to mention to in addition that Councilman Flynn mentioned, in addition to the the safe injection site, we need to do more in terms of treatment centers. Treatment is if we are able to help these folks get off of drug use where they do not have to use a self injection site, that'll be a credible goal for for everybody. So we want to make sure that that there are treatment facilities in that. And I have received this assurance from the chief of police that there will be no reduction in in combating illegal drug use. Drug sales will still have a robust effort to make sure that illegal drug sales will be converted in the city. So I'm pleased with that. I still hope that the Denver health will be a part of this program down the road as we as it comes forward and this passes and from a super from a community health standpoint, they are valuable partner. And I hope they'll play a vital role in this program. And I do like the pilot project. Mark Justice has said over and over, and this makes sure that the metrics for evaluating this program are meaningful, that you actually can see how effective this program is. And treatment treatment facility referrals obviously is an important metric to so. So I just want to share that results from Mark decision. I'll be supporting this tonight and I just wanted to let you know how they felt about. Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you, Councilman. New Councilman Lopez. Thank you, Mr. President. I'm very supportive of this. We're not going to arrest ourselves out of the problem. Jail is not going to be the cure for addiction. And it is anybody who understands this issue and understands the population, understands addiction, understands what folks go through when they're when when they are addicted, the process that it takes , the amount of resources. If we could have it our way, I know that we'd find it left and right. But it's not just up to Denver, it's also up to the state. There are so many systems that are failing that whole treatment model that are not addressing it. The hours are not there for folks. Sometimes their hours are very limited. There are stigmas associated. There are so many different factors outside that that that need to be addressed. In the meantime, while we're debating in government about what to fund and whether we're going to get mental health dollars or treatment dollars for a model like this , people are dying and people are dying. They're overdosing. They're doing it in areas where they're not being found or there's nobody around them to save their life, to give them a dose of Narcan or to even talk to them. This model allows for that interaction to happen because if not, it's not going to it's not going to prevent folks from. It's one of very many tools. One of very many tools that can be employed, that can be used to address the addiction issue and. The last thing you want. Is to not support something like this and know that the person who was ODing in a park in your neighborhood, your neighborhood, store, bathroom, because they're there, that's the only place that they can be. Right. Knowing that that can happen and knowing how you're voting right now, I rather have that option for someone to be there and not be alone. To have to talk to somebody, but then to make sure that they that what they're doing is is being supervised and can potentially save their life. And I think that's that's something and that's also an entry way to services. Right. This is a professional these are area these are people who know what they're doing. And it's an opportunity for folks to interact that way and could save some lives. The last thing I want to say is that, you know, when we think about this and we think of the folks on the other side, oh, all you're doing is enabling. You're not enabling. You're being there as a supervisor to make sure that they're not killing themselves. Oh, well, you're not. You know, why not just treat me? Well, treatment's very expensive. Yes, we rather have treatment, but not everybody has the access to treatment. It's not that simple. And it's not an either or. It's not supervised injection sites replacing treatment. This is just another tool and another tool for a society that still doesn't know how to address addiction. And a country that still is in the Stone Age is when it comes to addressing addiction. We have to look around the world for these models. We have to look at these other cities. And they are doing it right. And sometimes sometimes you just employ that. And by doing that, you've got to remove your fear. You got to you got to deprogram everything you've thought of to be an addict. Remove that fear and look at this person as a human being. And the end goal is saving their life. That's what this bill allows Denver to do. Should the state act? So I. Councilman Brooks, folks at the Harm Center, thank you for your work. Thank you for all for bringing this to us. I know this would be historical if we were to pass it, but I want folks to get out of this mindset that all this is scary. This is just a bunch of folks shooting up and and we're enabling them now. And this is replacing other treatment. It's not. This is another tool that we need to treat addiction. So thank you. I support this wholeheartedly, Councilman. Thank you, Councilman Lopez. Councilman Cashman. Thank you, Mr. President. As I said last week, we know people are dying on the street, letting people die in our restaurant bathrooms and doorways and our parks and our trails behind trees in wherever. It's not reducing the opioid crisis. Okay. I had a letter from a constituent today in email and he said, well, what's what's going to be next? Well, we're going to have government sponsored locations where alcoholics can go to drink their booze. We have it now. They're called bars. Well, think about it. They're called bars. And we license every last one of them. There are hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of places to get alcohol in Denver. We continue to license them. Now, not everybody who walks into a bar is an alcoholic, but thousands and thousands and thousands of them are. And all we do is we keep serving them. We pat them on the back and we send them out into the night. No one gives them a brochure that says, Hey, here's where the local Alcoholics Anonymous meeting is. Or here, here, here, here's a place you can go to get treatment if you're having trouble. As I read the bill for a proposed site and all the discussions I've heard is, as is the case with the Harm Reduction Center, when people come in to get clean, clean needles, they're offered help. They're counseled on where they can go. They're not just sent off into the night with a wink. So if we're serious about addressing addiction in this country, at some point we need to look at the fact that the Super Bowl is sponsored by Budweiser and our baseball team plays in Coors Field. You know it I don't know if we're ever going to get the stomach to look at the alcohol industry, but people are. I understand the concern with drug addiction. Absolutely. We need we need to cut it cut it back. We're talking about Vision zero four for traffic deaths. We need a Vision Zero for drug deaths as well. But as a society, we haven't made that commitment and it's about time that we do so. I will also be supporting this wholeheartedly. Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you, Councilman Cashman. Councilman Brooks. Yeah, thank you, Mr. President. And I want to thank all of my colleagues for for their diligence and hard work in this. I want to thank all the folks in the audience for being engaged and supporting this effort as well. This is an ordinance that allows for a pilot in the city of Denver with the General Assembly's approval and for a supervised use site. And how I got to this point, I had a council person say, you know, what's where's the data? Where's the information? How what's the work that you've done? Let me give you a number over 25 years. Over 60 cities, ten countries in over 100 sites. That's our data. We actually have the information that shows us that this. Innovative idea that started over 30 years ago works. But in our context, in this American context, it's so hard to wrap our our mind around. And I understand that and I get that. But the fear mongering and the talking down to our neighbors who are experiencing addiction, I've heard it all day today. I think it's ridiculous and it's actually disgusting. These are our neighbors. These are folks all over the world who are struggling with this, and we have an opportunity to address it. Let me also say, we 100% support the mayor's plan to address the opioid crisis in this city. He released a plan from 2018 to 2022. It's three prongs, guys. It's prevention. It's treatment, and it's harm reduction. And one of the strategies is to supervise you say. So let's not get stuck on this being just the one answer. Like Councilman Lopez says, there are several strategies that we're working on. And so I'm excited to support this. And and I'm excited to to have Denver lead boldly in this area. It's a big moment for our city. And as this. This council approves this and it gets sent to the mayor's desk to sign. There's a couple of things for my heart that I just want to say. This is more than just public policy. This is about enacting justice in the city of Denver. There is a national health crisis in front of us and cities are on the front lines. Philadelphia, New York. Portland. Just heard Portland, Maine. Now, is is starting to move forward on this. Seattle, Los Angeles, there are so many cities that are trying to move forward with this issues. And tonight we act to save lives and repair families. And this is a beautiful moment for our city to form a healing union with our state legislature and governor elect, because this is what it comes down to when we view people simply as addicts, we rob them of their humanity. And it becomes easy for us to stigmatize their struggle and ignore their pain. This ordinance is not about addicts. This is about our neighbors. This is about our neighbors experiencing addiction. When we see people as our neighbors, we see their stories. And they become deeply connected with us. And that is how we save lives. And that is why we are here tonight. And with that, Mr. President. Let's vote on this day. Thank you, Councilman Brooks. Seeing no other comments, Madam Secretary. Flynn. No. Black. All right. BROOKS Oh, yeah. ESPINOSA All right. Gilmore i Herndon. I Cashman. I can h. I. Lopez. I knew. Ortega. Sussman Hi. Mr. President. Hi. Madam Secretary, please call the voting and announce the results. Are we missing? Missing? A couple of. Minutes. They were missing a couple. Know now. We got 12, 12 eyes in one day. 12 eyes one accountability 1292 has passed. That does conclude the items to be called out. All other bills for introduction are ordered published were now ready for the block vote on proclamations, resolutions and bills on final consideration. Council members remember that this is a consent or block vote and you will need to vote. Otherwise, this is your last chance to call out an item for a separate vote. Councilman, can you please put the proclamations and resolutions for adoption and the bills on final consideration for final passage on the floor? Yes, Mr. President, I move that proclamations, resolutions be adopted and bills and final consideration be placed upon final consideration, and do pass in a block for the following items. 1422 1168. 13, 12, 13. 13, 13. 1714. 19 1197. 1268 1301 1302 1305 1306 1307 1286 1289 1315 1329 1207 1269 1270 1280 1281 1283 1284 1263, 1282, 1273. All series of 2018. Thank you very much. It has been moved and seconded. Madam Secretary, Roll Call Black. Hi, Brooks. Hi. SBC. Hi Flynn. Hi Gilmore. Hi Herndon. Hi Cashman. Hi can reach hi Lopez. I new Ortega. I Susman. Mr. President. I am secretary. Please close the voting, announce the results. 1339 As the proclamations and resolutions have been adopted and the bills have been placed upon final consideration and do pass tonight, there will be required public hearing on Council Bill 18, Dash 1208, designating 2600 Milwaukee Street, the Henderson House, as a structure for preservation.