Philadelphia’s opioid crisis has devastated local communities, with unintentional overdose fatality rates reaching record highs for the past three years.
In 2022, the city experienced more than 1,400 overdose deaths, according to the City of Philadelphia. Thirty-seven opioid deaths, a 23 percent increase from 2017 to 2023, happened in the 19121 and 19122 zip codes which encompass Main Campus, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported.
Despite the worsening crisis, City Council overturned Mayor Jim Kenney’s veto of a bill on Sept. 17. The bill will restrict the sites to one district in West and Southwest Philadelphia and prevent further creation of these locations. Supervised injection sites are a harm reduction effort designed to reduce the dangers associated with intravenous injection
While harm reduction is contested in local politics, junior public health majors Matt Dewhurst and Lu Collina launched Temple’s chapter of Students for Sensible Drug Policy, a global network aiming to reform lasting policies and effects of the War on Drugs, a political crackdown on drug use started by former President Richard Nixon.
Dewhurst and Collina, SSDP’s respective president and vice president, are working to promote policy reform, provide honest drug education and advocate for harm reduction resources in Philadelphia.
The students plan on writing letters to representatives, advocating for policy change, educating students at Temple, volunteering with local harm reduction organizations and providing informational resources to peers, Dewhurst said. He wants to spread awareness about harm reduction resources to reduce the stigma that harm reduction tactics, like safe injection sites, encourage drug use.
“The point of the org is to give students a space to not only talk about these things, help give other students information about these things, but also to be a way for us to hopefully impact change both in our community and then in the wider Philadelphia community and in our national community,” Dewhurst said.
Dewhurst and Collina were approached by Deirdre Dingman, a social and behavioral sciences professor who taught their Substance Use and Society course, about starting a chapter of SSDP at Temple because the students displayed interest in the topic.
The duo immediately got to work, as they noticed a void in student-led advocacy organizations related to drug policy.
“There’s a lot of social justice advocacy on campus, but the War on Drugs and its poor practices, its racist roots are things that are not given a space for student voices to be heard,” Dewhurst said.
Philadelphia’s crisis represents a larger public health emergency affecting individuals and families across socioeconomic lines, exacerbating social inequality. Opioid deaths increased by 87 percent and 43 percent among Black and Hispanic individuals respectively from 2018 to 2022.
However, improving drug policy to implement harm reduction efforts can help save lives.
More than 600 overdoses were reversed at overdose prevention centers by OnPoint NYC, a harm reduction resource center, during their first year of operations, according to Drug Policy Alliance, an organization working to end the War on Drugs and repair its harm.
Adam Al-Asad, the director of operations at Savage Sisters Recovery, a Philadelphia non-profit aiding people affected by substance use disorder, urges students and others to educate themselves on harm reduction resources and practices that can hopefully inspire policy changes.
“I think college students specifically have access to more information and also are going to deal with this more so than a lot of other people due to where the college campus are and because of the fact that their friends and peers are likely going to use substances relatively often,” Al-Asad said.
SSDP hosted its first general body meeting on Oct. 6. During the meeting, they worked towards establishing a set of ground rules for discussion in their club to cultivate a respectful and productive environment.
Isabel Gallard, a senior genomic medicine major, met Dewhurst through volunteer work at the Everywhere Project, a harm reduction organization in Philadelphia. She joined SSDP as soon as she found out about it and attended the first meeting.
“I think it’s really important that we as Temple students, and I guess just as people in general and also being a young person, kind of acknowledge the drug crisis that’s going on, especially in Philadelphia and in our own neighborhoods,” Gallard said.
While the organization hopes to engage in political advocacy in the greater Philadelphia region and on a national level, for now, they are focusing on educating members of the Temple community on the topic.
“Our first priority is issues surrounding substance use education and harm reduction on campus and in our community,” Dewhurst said.
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