The new facility in Providence, operated by the nonprofit Project Weber/RENEW, provides a place for people to use drugs under medical supervision.
This story was originally published by Rhode Island PBS/The Public’s Radio, a publication partner of Ocean State Stories.
PROVIDENCE — The city is now home to the country’s first state-sanctioned facility for people to use illegal drugs under medical supervision. The nonprofit Project Weber/RENEW on Tuesday held a ribbon-cutting to celebrate a years-long effort to bring an overdose prevention center to the Ocean State.
Advocates hope that the new facility will lead to fewer overdose-related deaths in Rhode Island, and more people getting connected with drug treatment. Last year, more than 400 people in Rhode Island died of an overdose.
“It’s just a place to keep people safe, prevent deaths, and connect people to services,” said Dennis Bailer, the overdose prevention program director at the organization.
Overdose prevention centers (OPCs) go by many names: harm-reduction centers, supervised-injection sites, and more, but the overarching approach remains the same. These spaces, which operate under medical supervision, provide a way for people who use drugs to avoid doing so alone, with the goal of preventing accidental overdose.
“Those deaths are preventable,” said Brandon Marshall, professor of epidemiology at Brown University. “This is just one tool in the state’s comprehensive response to this crisis that will provide resources to people who are extremely marginalized.”
Project Weber/RENEW will co-run the facility with VICTA, a nonprofit organization that provides access to behavioral health and substance abuse treatment. Staff will provide clients with access to clean supplies, like needles, and equipment to test drugs so people know exactly what they’re taking. People using the site will also be able to connect with recovery services, and basic needs like food and clean clothes.
A long road
The ribbon cutting follows several years of anticipation. In 2021, Gov. Dan McKee signed a law that opened the door to opening an overdose prevention center in Rhode Island, pending local approval. In February 2024, the Providence City Council passed a resolution authorizing the facility. Rhode Island allocated $2.6 million of its opioid settlement dollars to fund the pilot program, which is slated to run through at least March 2026.
Brown University also received a portion of a $5 million federal grant to study the new overdose prevention center, tracking questions like addiction treatment uptake rates, community impact, and cost analysis. Studies have shown that centers like the new one in Providence can save money in the long run.
The savings, said Alex Kral, an epidemiologist with the nonprofit research firm RTI International, come from preventing diseases like HIV and hepatitis-C, and reducing the number of ambulances sent out to reverse drug overdoses. Research shows that in many communities that opened an overdose prevention center, overdose-related 911 calls declined, alongside rates of HIV infection and visible drug consumption.
While formal overdose prevention centers are relatively new in the United States, other countries have explored the model for decades. Over 100 such centers operate around the world. Studies in Canada and Australia have shown that safe-injection sites can reduce fatal overdoses without increasing drug use or crime in surrounding communities.
The nation’s first government-sponsored supervised consumption sites opened in New York City in 2021. Now, other places are planning to launch them, as well. Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott announced his intent to open supervised consumption sites locally. Burlington, Vermont, approved a pilot program over the summer and expects to open a facility within a year. City officials in Somerville, Massachusetts, are working towards opening similar sites there, too.
Rhode Island remains the only state to have approved and written regulations for supervised-consumption sites.
“It’s been a long time coming,” Bailer of Project Weber/RENEW said.
A growing, and contested, tool
While research shows that overdose prevention centers present a powerful tool to curb fatal drug overdoses, sites like the one opening in Providence have been met with skepticism — and sometimes, legal challenges. The incoming Trump Administration, experts say, presents new uncertainty for facilities like the one opening in Rhode Island.
On the campaign trail, President-elect Donald Trump outlined an approach to the opioid overdose crisis focused on stopping the flow of fentanyl into the country through increased law enforcement, especially at the southern border.
“We’ve seen already that the incoming administration is really going to prioritize law-enforcement approaches,” said Regina LaBelle, a professor in the addiction policy program at Georgetown University who formerly worked on drug policy in both the Biden and Obama administrations.
During the first Trump administration, supervised-consumption sites did come under fire. In a 2017 news release, the U.S. Department of Justice said proposed sites in Vermont would be “counterproductive and dangerous as a matter of policy, and they would violate federal law.”
Two years later, the Justice Department sued a nonprofit organization trying to open a safe-injection site in Philadelphia. In 2021, a federal appeals court ruled that such sites are illegal under federal law. Just over a year ago, a federal prosecutor in New York threatened to shutter the city’s two safe injection sites, which have been open for roughly three years.
Local resistance has been strong elsewhere to overdose prevention centers and other harm-reduction methods. The Philadelphia city council passed a near-total ban on facilities like the one in Providence last year. West Virginia has made it harder to run needle-exchange programs. Idaho lawmakers also restricted the flow of federal dollars towards efforts to distribute Narcan.
Scott Burris, director of the Center for Public Health Law Research at Temple University, said issues around harm-reduction and drug-use don’t always follow party lines. For example, the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, has long advocated for deregulating drug-use in the United States, and supports efforts like the new facility in Providence.
“There’s a certain amount of political pressure on both sides now around harm-reduction issues,” he said. “I just think the politics are very hard to predict, and we won’t have to wait long to find out.”
Burris said he would pay close attention to who the Trump Administration appoints as the new U.S. Attorney for Rhode Island. The person in that role, he said, will have a lot of power to decide whether to take legal action or not. And having the center up and running ahead of that transition could make a big difference.
“If you get a new U.S. attorney in there at the end of January and you’ve already got six lives saved, that becomes a different political situation,” Burris said.
On the ground in Rhode Island
Exactly when the overdose prevention center will open its doors remains uncertain. Project Weber/RENEW still needs to clear bureaucratic hurdles, like receiving a certificate of occupancy for the building, before the state Department of Health will formally license the facility.
Outreach workers have been spreading the word about the new Overdose Prevention Center for months already, and advocates are eager to see how it gets used.
George, 46, who is unhoused and uses fentanyl, recognizes the dangers of using alone. The Public’s Radio is only using his first name because he is discussing his use of illegal drugs.
“You just never know,” George said. “If you do happen to overdose, and there’s nobody there to bring you back, you will die.”
At first, he said he had “mixed emotions” about the overdose prevention center opening, but conversations with staff and volunteers from Project Weber/RENEW helped him warm up to the idea.
“It’s going to be a place where you can go and figure it out,” he said. “Figure out if you want to still use. Figure out if you want to be clean. Figure out the strength of your drugs.”
Still, George said he’s curious to see the Overdose Prevention Center and expanded Project Weber/RENEW facilities, but he’s not sure if he’ll actually use drugs there.
“I’m just a little apprehensive about using in this closed environment of structure,” he said. “But I’m definitely going to go and check it out. And I’m looking forward to it.”
This is a developing story and will be updated.
Editor’s note: An earlier version of this story inaccurately attributed a quotation to Brandon Marshall. It has been removed.
