Resource Document on Safe Consumption Facilities
Approved by the Joint Reference Committee, February 2021

In 2019, there were nearly 72,000 U.S. overdose deaths, a new record high. Most of these overdose deaths involved opioids, with rising involvement of fentanyl and fentanyl analogues, which are increasingly found in street heroin and other opioids and often without the knowledge of the user. Even more concerning, it appears that the coronavirus pandemic is further worsening the overdose crisis.1 In the context of this ongoing crisis, psychiatrists must be aware of the full range of policy, organizational, and public health strategies impacting the lives of people who use drugs (PWUD). This document aims to inform psychiatrists about one such strategy: Safe Consumption Facilities (SCFs, also known as “supervised consumption sites”), an approach that has long been a feature of harm reduction efforts in certain countries and that has attracted increasing attention in the United States.