Governor Newsom signed AB 2136, authored by Assemblymember Jones-Sawyer, removing legal barriers to establishing more drug checking programs in the state. The bill will also increase participation by providing much needed protections for those involved in these services.

People in Los Angeles County now have access to naloxone — the medication that can reduce the effects of an opioid overdose — in more places than ever before, including schools, churches, libraries and jails.

And that may be a key reason why the number of drug overdose deaths in the county plateaued last year, after more than eight years of alarming year-over-year increases, county officials said…

Programs like needle exchanges and safe-consumption sites can lead to fewer deaths and help connect users to treatment. Without harm reduction, experts said, the city’s fentanyl crisis might well be far deadlier.

Highland Hospital has a new vending machine. But instead of soda, it has socks. Instead of chips, there’s condoms.

And it’s all free.

The “harm-reduction vending machine” launched in Highland’s emergency department this fall, offers basic supplies to anyone who needs it, with a focus on reaching those who might benefit from the substance-use services at the hospital’s Bridge program.

Isaias Lopez was dying, but he didn’t know it.

Lopez was slumped against a wall in the Tenderloin district of San Francisco, where the concentration of homelessness and drug use have divided this city politically.

A baby blue baseball cap and a white hoodie covered his head, making him just another human lump to be avoided by passersby. He had begun to nod off from the fentanyl that minutes ago was in a scrap of tin foil that now lay nearly empty on his legs