Federal Way legislator, among others, in support to ban heroin injection sites

May 12, 2017 12:50 pm
Federal Way legislator, among others, in support to ban heroin injection sites

Citizens for a Safe King County announced they’ll be moving forward with Initiative-27, a King County initiative for this November’s ballot to ban heroin injection sites, on Thursday.

Federal Way’s Sen. Mark Miloscia, R-Federal Way, is a member of the group. Others include chairman Joshua Freed, Rep. Morgan Irwin, R-Enumclaw, members of local neighborhood groups, and Corri Durant, a Seattle resident whose brother recently died from complications stemming from years of heroin abuse.

In September of 2016, a task force assembled by King County Executive Dow Constantine and Seattle Mayor Ed Murray recommended the county build two controversial sites—one in Seattle and one outside the city limits —for heroin users to inject heroin while government employees monitor them to ensure they don’t overdose.

“If our goal is to save lives, then we should be getting people off heroin not creating places for them to use,” Freed said.

The group began collecting signatures following the press conference and will need 47,443 by July 31 to qualify for the November ballot.

“I have no doubt Safe King County will collect the necessary signatures,” Miloscia said. “I have been touring the county talking to regular folks over the last several months and I haven’t found one person outside of downtown Seattle that supports these dangerous, illegal sites.”

If King County goes through with their plan to build two heroin injection sites, they will be the first of their kind in the United States, officials said in a news release. Constantine and Murray have pointed to Vancouver, B.C.’s heroin injection site, Insite, as proof of their success, but Freed disagrees.

“Since Insite opened in 2003, overdose deaths have increased by 450 percent while the population in B.C. has only grown 15 percent,” Freed said. “That’s not a model of success.”

Any registered voter in King County is eligible to sign I-27, and the group announced voters can request a petition be mailed to them on their website: www.SafeKingCounty.org. If the measure qualifies, it will be the first King County initiative on the ballot since 2008.