Nurse practitioner Bobby Harris, left, talks with patient Darryl Jackson during a visit inside a Baltimore City Health Department RV, Monday, March 20, 2023, in Baltimore. The Baltimore City Health Department's harm reduction program uses the RV to address the opioid crisis, which includes expanding access to medication assisted treatment by deploying a team of medical staff to neighborhoods with high rates of substance abuse and offering buprenorphine prescriptions. Credit: Julio Cortez/AP.
Nurse practitioner Bobby Harris, left, talks with patient Darryl Jackson during a visit inside a Baltimore City Health Department RV, Monday, March 20, 2023, in Baltimore. The Baltimore City Health Department's harm reduction program uses the RV to address the opioid crisis, which includes expanding access to medication assisted treatment by deploying a team of medical staff to neighborhoods with high rates of substance abuse and offering buprenorphine prescriptions. Credit: Julio Cortez/AP.

A prominent mental health nonprofit organization is pushing for overdose prevention sites across the state and for more funding for the national suicide hotline as legislators make their way back to Annapolis for the General Assembly’s first day of the 2024 session.

Behavior Health System Baltimore (BHSB) is encouraging lawmakers to double down on harm reduction measures for drug users by creating overdose prevention sites throughout the state.

Those sites will provide a safe, sterile area for people to use opioids while also pairing them with addiction treatment and medical options.

“Overdose prevention sites are a key harm reduction strategy, it is proven that it’s been effective at saving lives and improving public safety,” said Adrienne Bridenstine, the vice president of policy at BHSB.

Lawmakers proposed opening six of the overdose prevention sites in legislation last year, but it did not make it into law.

The sites have largely been a success in New York, which opened the nation’s first sanctioned site in 2021. About 120 countries provide overdose treatment sites in some capacity.

Read more (and listen) at WYPR.