At the corner of Frankstown and Homewood avenues, the war on drugs continues in full view. Police regularly arrest people looking for drugs here; sometimes they’re repeat offenders. Pittsburgh police say local residents have complained about open-air drug sales.

Violence comes with the territory. There were multiple shootings on the block last year, including in June when police found a 6-year-old girl with a critical gunshot wound to her chest.

This block in Homewood has also become a symbol of a different approach to the country’s problem with drug addiction disorders: harm reduction — i.e. treating people suffering from addiction like they would any other disease. To advocates, that means giving them effective health care rather than continuing to cycle them through the criminal justice system.

Keith Richardson, who says he is homeless, was at the corner of Frankstown and Homewood on a recent Friday in December and pointed to an example of the harm reduction approach in the trees across the street. Naloxone is kept in the branches to revive anyone who overdoses. In April, Pittsburgh Police Chief Scott Schubert watched one of his officers, who had been flagged down a block away from the intersection, revive a man with naloxone given to the officer by a resident.

In a nearby parking lot, Prevention Point Pittsburgh hands out clean needles, helping to prevent the spread of infections. A year ago in the same lot, Prevention Point started a program where people suffering from opioid addiction can get a prescription for buprenorphine — a medicine that some studies have shown cut the likelihood of dying from an overdose in half. 

The war on drugs continues in plain site at the intersection of Frankstown and Homewood avenues. (Google street view)

These community-based programs are a response to the fact that life-saving medicine can be difficult to obtain for people suffering from addiction. If a person sustains a gunshot wound, they are typically given the best care possible on their way to the hospital. But harm reduction advocates say for people suffering from addiction, it’s hard for them to receive medicine that can prevent them from dying of an overdose. The challenges include long wait times to get into treatment facilities, burdensome regulations on how the medicine can be administered, underutilized local programs and additional personal challenges people face who are dealing with addiction. 

In response to a record number of overdose deaths during the COVID pandemic, the harm reduction approach is gaining momentum locally and nationally. In November, three ambulances in the City of Pittsburgh were equipped with buprenorphine for the first time. In December, the federal government opened up its first grant program targeted at harm reduction work. Gov. Tom Wolf’s administration has promised to increase its harm reduction efforts in the new year.

The changes are needed, according to Richardson, who sees the impact of more powerful opioids every day on the corner in Homewood. “The thing is they have synthetic drugs like fentanyl, not only in heroin but in coke and pills. They are putting it in everything and people are dying,” he said. “A lot of times people don’t know there is fentanyl. And some do know and just don’t care. And they take a little bit, and it takes them out.”

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