Jason first started using fentanyl a few years ago, when the pandemic threw his life off balance. By now, he’s used to hiding his drug use.
“You duck into, like, an alley, or behind a car or somewhere where no one’s going to see you,” he said.
The Public’s Radio is only using Jason’s first name because he uses illegal drugs. He knows that using alone, in tucked-away places, makes it even riskier to use a drug as dangerous as fentanyl.
“When no one sees you, no one’s going to find you if you overdose,” he said. “And, you know, I’ve lost a few friends, and no one’s found them.”
That’s the problem a new facility is hoping to solve.
Local nonprofit Project Weber/RENEW is planning to open the doors on Tuesday to a new “Overdose Prevention Center,” or OPC. The center won’t see clients for a few weeks. But when it does, the building will offer space for people to use drugs under medical supervision. It will also offer equipment to test drugs, clean supplies to use drugs, medical staff able to administer the overdose-reversal medication Narcan, and connections to addiction treatment and other medical services.
More than 400 people died of a drug overdose in Rhode Island last year, according to state data.
The Providence OPC will be the first-of-its-kind in the U.S. Rhode Island is the only state so far to have approved and created regulations for overdose prevention centers. Vermont plans to open a pilot OPC in Burlington after lawmakers passed enabling legislation earlier this year.
Similar facilities have been open in Europe, Canada and Australia for years. But in the U.S., they exist in a gray area of federal law: not explicitly banned but it’s not clear if they’re prohibited. New York City opened the nation’s first two government-supported facilities in 2021; last year, a federal prosecutor threatened to shut them down. And experts say the incoming Trump Administration could bring new uncertainty about opening and operating these kinds of spaces.
“There’s a certain amount of political pressure on both sides now around harm reduction issues,” said Scott Burris, director of the Center for Public Health Law Research at Temple University. “I just think the politics are very hard to predict, and we won’t have to wait long to find out.”
Jason said he likes the idea of having somewhere that people can go to use illegal drugs like fentanyl under medical supervision.
“Well, the problem is not going away,” Jason said. “You kind of got to work with things the best you can. You don’t want people dying on the streets.”
In part due to his drug use, he became homeless and lived in a tent off Branch Avenue in Providence. There, he met Amy Santiago, a street outreach worker with Better Lives Rhode Island, a nonprofit group that supports people experiencing homelessness.
“[The OPC] gives our folks a place where they can feel comfortable,” she said, “a place where they don’t have to hide anymore.”
Santiago says beyond providing a place to use drugs, she thinks it’s going to make it easier to do a big part of her job: getting people off the streets and into permanent housing.
“By having this safe space, I have, like, a contained place to talk about the housing possibilities that are out there and what we need to do to get to that point,” Santiago said. “I can’t do that in an encampment.”
While Jason supports the city and state investing in the overdose prevention center, he said he’s not sure how useful it will be for him. He lives in Warwick with his girlfriend, and said the South Providence facility isn’t on his usual routes.
“It’s not in my travels,” Jason said. “I have to go to the other side of town to do that there. If there was more of them, then I would [use one]. I definitely would.”
Jason said he’s tried to get clean before, even taking methadone, a prescription drug that helps treat opioid addiction. But he struggled to maintain his community when he tried to get clean, so quickly fell back into using again. But he’s hopeful it could help someone else.
“I’m sure there’s people that are going to use that facility, they’re going to get clean,” Jason said. “I’m sure there is. There has to be. And that person might not get the chance if they don’t — if they overdose somewhere where they can’t be found. You don’t want to lose lives too early.”
