Safe injection drama unfolds on House floor in Olympia

As Washington state lawmakers head into the final week of the legislative session, the clock is ticking to reach agreement on everything from budgets to several high profile bills. Among those, a major proposal to help fight the opioid crisis.

The bill had been sailing through the legislature until it hit a snag last week.

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SB 5380 is the wide-ranging bill requested by the governor that focuses on expanding treatment across the state, especially medication-assisted treatment with drugs like suboxone. It also strengthens the prescription monitoring program, and makes several other changes aimed at reducing the number of prescription opioids in circulation, including allowing patients to only partially fill their prescriptions.

It passed the Senate unanimously last month. But then, last week, an amendment from Republican Rep. Drew Stokesbary was introduced on the House floor. It targets the issue of safe injection sites.

“A lot of us are realizing that safe injection sites just aren’t going to make the world a better place, they’re going to extend and prolong the opioid epidemic, and I think this amendment is really good step to make sure that the Health Care Authority, in its partnership with local public health jurisdictions is only partnering with those folks that are taking this viewpoint of treatment first, and not worrying about these distracting issues of safe injection sites that so many folks do find problematic,” Stokesbary said from the House floor.

The amendment bars the Health Care Authority from partnering with any agency that supervises safe injection sites, which could put public health dollars at risk for any city or county that has them. Seattle and King County both have proposals for safe injection sites, but no firm plan on establishing them. Seattle last discussed a mobile van that would act as the safe injection site.

Democratic Rep. Eileen Cody opposed the amendment.

“These safe injection sites are not treatment plans, they are a harm reduction strategy that I actually support,” Cody said ahead of the vote on the amendment. “But as I said before, we are mixed on this side so I encourage everyone to vote their conscious.”

The amendment passed with 19 Democrats in favor, and the entire bill passed with just two no votes, both Democrats from the Seattle area.

That made the bill suddenly more controversial as highlighted in a Crosscut article last week. Rep. Cody suggested in the article that Stokesbary and House Republicans were playing politics just trying to get their next “hit piece for the campaign trail.”

Stokesbary took issue with that.

“That couldn’t really be further from the truth,”  he told KIRO Radio. “I think House Republicans have been pretty united and consistent over the years in saying that supervised drug consumption sites aren’t the right approach. They do more to enable behavior than to fix behavior. This is a serious issue that deserves a serious response and we ought to be doing all we can to focus our resources on prevention and treatment and injection sites distract from those two primary goals.”

But Stokesbary admits Cody was right on target when she suggested in the article he was trying to stop safe injection sites from opening.

“That’s exactly what I’m trying to do,” he said. “I don’t think that they have a place in our system, certainly not at this point in time when we have not yet done everything we can do to maximize the amount of treatment and prevention resources we’re providing to folks suffering from opioid addiction or at risk of opiate addiction.”

The bill left the House with several amendments and the Senate refused to concur, with Democrat Annette Cleveland not saying on the floor which of the amendments were an issue, only that the bill needed more work after the changes in the House.

Republican Senator Steve O’Ban agreed the changes made in the House were an issue, but said on the floor he wanted Stokesbary’s safe injection site amendment to remain in the bill, so it’s clear there are going to be issues to resolve if this bill is going to pass before the end of the regular session on Sunday.

Both Cleveland and Cody declined interview requests for this story.

Stokesbary says it would make no sense for him and Republicans in the House to be using this as ammo for future hit pieces in the next election, since the only people who voted against the amendment are from very safe Puget Sound area districts. He says it doesn’t really make a lot of sense to turn it into a campaign issue. because these are folks who win their elections by 20 or 30 points.

Stokesbary did request a roll call rather than voice vote in the amendment though, suggesting Republicans are likely trying to get Democrats on record with where they stand on the controversial issue of safe injection sites.

This bill is the big one for addressing the opioid crisis this session, and just about everyone on both sides of the aisle has supported the majority of the policies in it up until now.

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