Based on the Centers for Disease Control’s latest provisional data on drug poisoning deaths, it is projected that the United States may be losing 90,000 American lives to drug poisoning every 12 months.

We know with certainty, with a comprehensive harm reduction strategy, all drug-related death and disease is preventable.

After being hit early and hard by the overdose crisis, Governor Sununu signed Senate Bill 234 into law in 2017. This bill legalized needle exchanges. For the past three years, the Granite State has seen overdose rates decrease while the rest of the nation has faced alarming increases. This trend is aligned with over 30 years of research demonstrating the efficacy of harm reduction programs.

While the nation’s overdose rates may have increased by as much as 27% in one year during the Covid-19 pandemic, New Hampshire responded by expanding essential harm-reduction services, reducing barriers to substance use treatments like buprenorphine through telemedicine, increased the supply of cost-free naloxone, and affirmed that drug use is a health issue not a criminal issue.

The New Hampshire Senate recently rejected a proposal for a new program that we believe is critical to New Hampshire’s fight against overdose, homelessness, addiction, viral hepatitis and Covid-19: a harm reduction and overdose prevention program run by the state Department of Health and Human Services.

The New Hampshire Providers Association, representing alcohol and other drug service providers, strongly supports this section of Senate Bill 149 and urges the House to reconsider the amendment that removed it.

At the very least, SB 149 should keep part three of the bill to allow for a study commission or academic pilot program to better understand the impacts of bringing a legal OPC to New Hampshire, similar to the work that led up to legalized syringe services programs in 2017.

Our association believes that a harm reduction program would help us make measurable progress in reducing overdose deaths in New Hampshire. Overdose prevention centers are safe locations where drug users can use pre-obtained substances under medical supervision. Staff are present to provide first aid, administer naloxone and sometimes oxygen if an overdose occurs.

More than 120 of these facilities operate in 10 countries, many of which have been in operation for decades and supervised millions of injections. No one has ever died in one of these programs. Evidence shows that participants in harm reduction programs are three times more likely to stop injecting and five times more likely to enter substance use treatment.

In the past three years, nine U.S. states have considered legislation to authorize and implement such centers, and at least nine major cities are considering them to help address the overdose crisis at the local level.

The harm reduction model saves local governments significant amounts of taxpayer dollars when overdose deaths and infectious disease transmission are removed from healthcare costs. It also helps to reduce crime.

The philosophy behind the harm reduction model is that it makes more ethical and economic sense to acknowledge the dignity and humanity of people who use drugs and bring them into a community of care.

New Hampshire needs to be forward-thinking and authorize this proven and realistic strategy. It is possible to have zero overdose deaths in New Hampshire, and that strategy includes legal overdose prevention centers.

Kerran Vigroux is executive director of the NH Providers Association, and Ryan Fowler is chair of the association’s policy committee.