1. United States
2. Hawaii
3. Letter

I would like to encourage the support and construction of a Consumption Centre. If you are unaware of what a Consumption Centre is it is a site staffed of medical personnel who watch over people who take illicit substances. These places are known as safe injection sites and Overdose protection centers. The purpose of these sites is to provide a safe place for drug users to ingest substances without fear of prosecution and overdosing as they will be attended by trained medical teams standing by to help those when showing signs of ODing. Now they do not supply the substances for their patients but they will make sure that clean needles are available, assist with safe injection practices, and answer any medical question a person may have. Centers like this will also streamline substance abuse treatment as those who are suffering from it will have direct access to the help needed, bringing the overall drug use down as a result. And most importantly it will bring a halt to overdose deaths because, in the over 200 consumption centers in the world, there hasn't been a single overdose death in any facility. Now I understand the optics of allowing a building like this. People would argue that it will enable drug use and that it will encourage criminal behavior but the data speaks for itself. Over 100 peer-reviewed studies have concluded that this brings drug use down and ultimately saves a whole bunch of lives in the process. And we have to accept that we can't stop people from taking substances as a whole, it's been a part of human nature for thousands of years. We can at least centralize the area where they do drugs so that they are out of the public eye, and make sure that we can keep them safe and get them help when they decide to take it. It is in the best interest of public safety and public health that you consider funding or at least start researching how we could implement it here.