Safehouse v. Department of Justice, et al.

In the midst of the opioid and overdose crises ravaging the nation and causing the death of more than 3,214 people over the last three years in the City of Philadelphia, petitioner Safehouse, a Philadelphia non-profit organization, seeks to establish an overdose prevention site that will offer medically supervised consumption services—a public-health intervention employed to prevent overdose deaths by providing immediate access to opioid reversal agents and urgently needed medical care at the time and place they are required, which is at the moment of consumption. A divided panel of the Third Circuit reversed the grant of a declaratory judgment in favor of Safehouse and held that the proposed facility would violate 21 U.S.C. § 856(a)(2)—a provision of the Controlled Substances Act (CSA) that Congress passed to target “crack houses” and “rave parties.” Section 856(a)(2) makes it unlawful (in relevant part) to “manage or control any place, whether permanently or temporarily, . . . and knowingly and intentionally . . . make available for use, with or without compensation, the place for the purpose of unlawfully manufacturing, storing, distributing, or using a controlled substance.” The question presented is: Does 21 U.S.C. § 856(a) make it a felony to offer medically supervised consumption services for the purpose of preventing opioid overdose deaths? (i)