Seattle 'Evaluating Options' After Rosenstein Remarks On CHELs

SEATTLE, WA - Seattle city officials say they are "evaluating options" after remarks by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein Wednesday that the federal government would stop cities from opening safe-use injection sites. Seattle and King County have been planning for more than a year to open two such sites, which are also called Community Health Engagement Locations (CHELs).

Rosentstein promised an aggressive response from the Department of Justice in an interview Thursday with Philadelphia's WHYY. Like Seattle, Philadelphia has proposed opening a CHEL to combat opioid overdoses.

“If local governments get in the business of facilitating drug use, of telling people we’re going to help you — not just hand out needles, because they’re not just handing out needles — they’re actually inviting people to bring these illegal drugs into their places of business. If you start down that road, you’re really going to undermine the deterrent message that I think is so important in order to prevent people from becoming addicted in the future," Rosentstein told WHYY.

Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan declined to comment on Rosenstein's remarks. Durkan and Rosenstein worked as U.S. Attorneys at the same time - him in Maryland, and Durkan in Seattle.

But Seattle City Attorney Pete Holmes criticized Rosenstein for viewing the opioid crisis as a criminal rather than public health issue.

“It’s disappointing that Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein continues to perpetuate the old assumption that criminalization is the solution to a growing public health epidemic. Last I checked, Rod Rosenstein is a very capable Deputy Attorney General, not a Surgeon General. If we hope to simultaneously unwind the 'war on drugs' and address this crisis with real solutions, we apparently can't look to Jeff Sessions and the Trump Administration for help," Holmes said through a spokesman.

In 2017, the King County Heroin and Prescription Opiate Addiction Task Force recommended, among other solutions, that two CHELs open in the county - one in Seattle, the other near a transit hub somewhere in King County.

Durkan has picked city health strategist Jeff Sakuma to find a location for a CHEL in Seattle. In June, Sakuma told a City Council Committee that there are no suitable buildings in the city, and so a mobile option was being explored. The City Council has set aside $2 million to open a safe injection site.

Rosenstein's comments came one day before King County announced a spike in HIV cases related to injection drugs. At a CHEL, drug users would be givenclean needles, which health officials believe would lower the spread of disease.

The safe-injection sites would also help prevent overdose deaths, health officials say. In 2017, 69 percent of the 379 overdose deaths in King County were opioid-related. But CHELs would have anti-opioid medicines like naloxone available. Those drugs can reverse an overdose if administered quickly.

Caption: Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan stands next to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein at a February 2018 press conference about the murder of Assistant U.S. Attorney Thomas Wales.

Photo courtesy Federal Bureau of Investigation