ALBANY — Getting arrested on felony charges didn’t stop one of Dr. Betty Kolod’s patients from using illegal narcotics, the physician says.

“The homelessness and the criminal charges that he’s facing actually drove him to use drugs even more,” Kolod told CNHI.

That man, at least temporarily, is no longer living on the streets. He is hospitalized, she said.

She and a coalition of public health advocates say the state should expand the use of overdose prevention centers, also known as safe injection sites, to deal with the rising number of fatal drug overdoses.

“We’ve seen that overdose is the number one cause of death among people experiencing homelessness.” said Kolod, a New York City physician. “People with unstable housing are the exact individuals who don’t have a place to use drugs. This is the population who would most likely use an overdose prevention center.”

New York City became the nation’s first municipality to authorize sites where drug users, while monitored by staffers trained to deal with overdoses, can inject drugs they bring to the facility. The users can have the drugs tested to determine whether they are laced with potentially deadly fentanyl or other adulterants.

A measure dubbed the Safer Consumption Services Act would expand overdose prevention centers statewide. Advocates say more than 200 lives have already been saved at the two facilities in New York City through the reversal of overdoses.

One of the bill’s co-sponsors, Assemblyman Dick Gottfried, D-Manhattan, said he is optimistic the bill will be advanced by the Assembly Health Committee in the coming week. He is that committee’s chairman.

The approach advocated for by Kolod and scores of other addiction experts remains controversial. Some law enforcement officials argue it is inappropriate for government-sanctioned venues to host the injection of illegal drugs.

Delaware County Sheriff Craig DuMond said allowing drug use at the sites would only facilitate addiction to potentially deadly narcotics.

“We would be enabling self-destructive behavior,” DuMond said. He says he is skeptical an addict visiting such a facility could be steered into treatment from one of them. “Once a person goes down this road, they lose all sense of control and common sense.”

The New York City facilities have also been criticized by Rep. Nicole Malliotakis, R-Staten Island. She has labeled them “heroin shooting galleries that only encourage drug use and deteriorate our quality of life.”

But VOCAL-NY, a progressive advocacy group that has been seeking to build support for the legislation, said inaction on the bill by lawmakers will result in the deaths of New Yorkers who use drugs in unsafe ways.

“The Senate and Assembly must heed the calls of New Yorkers — from upstate to downstate — and urgently pass the overdose prevention bills on the table, and reject the notion that saving lives is partisan or divisive,” said Jasmine Budnella, the group’s director of drug policy.”

Gottfried said the overdose prevention centers in New York City are well-run and have created no negative impacts for their surrounding neighborhoods. He noted he visited such a facility during a visit to Vancouver, Canada, and came away impressed by how well-run it was.

“They have health care providers and counselors on site,” the veteran lawmaker said. “It’s a very effective harm-reduction approach to save lives. The current system is certainly not saving lives.”

According to the National Center for Health Statistics, from April 2020 to April 2021, more than 100,000 people in the United States died from drug overdoses. That was the single highest death toll for a 12-month period since such data has been tracked.

DuMond said he supports more robust efforts to extend treatment resources to those coping with addiction. As for injection sites, he said, “It’s going in the wrong direction and sending the wrong message.”