A Rhode Island nonprofit is set to open a government-sanctioned site for illicit drug use this week, making it just the second organization in the U.S. to officially offer supervised consumption and the first to do so outside New York City.
The nonprofit, Project Weber/RENEW, will hold a ribbon-cutting event for its new facility in Providence, R.I., on Dec. 10, and is expected to begin offering the controversial harm reduction service upon receiving final licensing approval soon after.
The opening represents a long-awaited expansion of supervised consumption, which aims to prevent death by allowing drug users to consume under medical supervision. Currently, only one organization, the New York-based nonprofit OnPoint, officially provides the service, having offered supervised consumption at its two Manhattan locations since late 2021. While organizations in other states have announced plans to operate similar facilities, they have faced resistance at the local and state level, and from the federal government.
“I don’t think anybody wants to continue to see people die, and this is the evidence-based intervention that can supplement the work we’re doing with Narcan distribution and other types of harm reduction,” said Lisa Peterson, the chief operating officer of VICTA, an addiction care provider partnering with Weber/RENEW to offer clinical services at the harm reduction center.
“The consumption space is truly only one part of a much broader approach to harm reduction,” she said, arguing the site will yield positive outcomes not only for its clients but also for the entire neighborhood it serves. “But it has positive outcomes on the neighborhood in terms of cleanliness, in terms of your kid not walking to school and seeing somebody overdosed on the sidewalk.”
Long before the presidential election in November, Weber/RENEW officials had announced their intention to open the supervised consumption site in late 2024. Still, the timing of the facility’s opening is noteworthy: President-elect Donald Trump takes office in roughly seven weeks, and conservative political leaders have typically opposed supervised consumption, arguing the sites violate a federal law commonly known as the “crack house statute,” which prohibits operating a facility for the purpose of unlawfully using a controlled substance.
Though a prominent federal prosecutor threatened in 2023 to shut down OnPoint’s work, the Biden administration has largely looked the other way since the New York City facilities opened in 2021 with backing from two Democratic mayors: Bill de Blasio and, later, Eric Adams.
The Trump administration, meanwhile, was actively opposed to the practice of supervised consumption, even suing in 2019 to stop Safehouse, a Philadelphia-based nonprofit, from opening a site there. And while a federal prosecutor in New York has threatened to bar OnPoint from further operations, he has so far allowed the organization to continue its work. As of mid-2024, OnPoint NYC said it had intervened to prevent over 1,500 overdoses since its opening.
“Americans struggling with addiction need treatment and reduced access to deadly drugs,” Rod Rosenstein, then the deputy attorney general, wrote in a New York Times op-ed in 2018. “They do not need a taxpayer-sponsored haven to shoot up.”
The Rhode Island opening breaks new ground in the legal fight, however: The site is the first to begin operating under the umbrella of a specific state law legalizing supervised consumption. Rhode Island enacted a bill creating a supervised consumption pilot program in 2021. Minnesota’s legislature passed a similar bill in 2023, and Vermont’s followed suit in 2024. California’s legislature has also passed multiple bills authorizing pilot supervised consumption sites, but each was vetoed by a Democratic governor.
Beyond their likely illegality under federal law, opponents of supervised consumption sites argue they enable people who use drugs to continue doing so without consequences, and may attract crime and unruly behavior to the neighborhoods that host them.
Proponents say the sites provide a haven for drug users, allowing them to consume substances using safer supplies and without fear of death. The sites also typically provide harm reduction services like sterile needles or pipes, wound care, and more basic quality-of-life offerings like hot meals and laundry machines.
Evidence regarding supervised consumption sites’ overall effectiveness is limited. But the sites are common across Europe and elsewhere around the world, including in Canada, though several sites in other countries have also faced local opposition. Most studies suggest that their presence is linked to a reduction in overdose deaths — and do not support opponents’ claims that they are associated with increased drug use or other crime. In 2023, the National Institute on Drug Abuse awarded researchers at New York University and Brown University to study outcomes related to the opening of supervised consumption sites in New York and Providence.
“These are very well-studied interventions in Canada, in Europe, and there have been recent reports out of France which show significant reductions in emergency department visits and overdoses among people who use overdose prevention centers,” said Brandon Marshall, a Brown professor who will lead the project in Rhode Island. “That being said, this is a unique context: We have by far the world’s most severe overdose crisis, a different health care system than any other developed nation, so I think it behooves us to understand how overdose prevention centers could operate effectively in a broader continuum of care here in the United States.”
STAT’s coverage of chronic health issues is supported by a grant from Bloomberg Philanthropies. Our financial supporters are not involved in any decisions about our journalism.