In a conversation with IHRC, Castro expressed support for allowing cities to pilot overdose prevention site programs.
When asked by IHRC how Castro would instruct the Department of Justice as President to respond to safe consumption space efforts in cities like Philadelphia, Castro responded, “Well I would like these communities to be able to pursue these safe consumption spaces and essentially pilot out how they work. I believe that we owe it to the effort to see how we can make sure that we avoid these kinds of tragic circumstances… We’ve been trying it one way for so long, and I also believe, having been a Mayor of a city, that one of the values of local communities is that they can try out policy in their own community and measure the results and see how it works, because the system that we have in place right now doesn’t seem to be working very much at all. So… whether it’s Philadelphia or at some of the other cities that have tried it, I believe that we should allow for the piloting of these programs, and that that will help us come to a determination nationally about the approach.”
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