Utah Moves Toward New Rules on Drug Use in Public Spaces

by Jacob Rueda

A unanimous committee vote sent a bill regulating drug use in public spaces to the House floor this week. The vote signals a broad legislative agreement on a question that has hovered over Utah’s drug policy, which is the overlap between recovery spaces and the places where drug use takes place.

Bill sponsor Rep. Tyler Clancy, R‑Provo, presented HB 205 before the House Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice Appropriations Committee on Monday. He framed it as an attempt to stop that overlap.

The bill sets standards for recovery pods inside county jails, creates a treatment and supervision track in justice courts, and restricts syringe exchange programs from operating in parks, homeless shelters and permanent supportive housing. Programs would still distribute naloxone and conduct outreach, but syringe exchange would require written permission from the public entity that controls the property.

Clancy called the bill an attempt to get different entities to work together instead of against each other. 

“We are strengthening recovery at every level,” he said after the meeting had adjourned. Salt Lake City police have told lawmakers that syringe exchange events in parks draw people into those areas, making it harder to keep them safe for families. Clancy said parks become hubs for drug use because they are public property and harder to enforce.

“If I am doing drugs on your property, at your house, you can easily trespass me,” he said, “When there's places that are public property, it's more difficult to enforce different laws because it's public property.”

Service providers who work directly with people experiencing homelessness described the same pattern. Leaders from The Other Side Village, a planned community for homeless residents, supported the bill and argued that the physical environment often determines whether someone can exit addiction.

Preston Cochran, the village’s CEO, spent years working out of the Gail Miller Resource Center. He said the surrounding blocks functioned as an open drug market.

“From my office I could see drug deals happening on the street,” Cochran said, “I’d call law enforcement [and] sometimes they show up. Most of the time they wouldn’t.” The bill would “put some teeth” into enforcement, he said, referring to law enforcement’s ability to restrict drug activity in specific public spaces.

Mo Egan, the village’s director of recruitment, spoke from lived experience. He spent nearly a decade homeless in San Francisco’s Tenderloin district and is now in recovery. He said short term treatment programs and transactional services do not match the reality of long term addiction.

“Most people on the streets are not resistant to many of the programs and rehabilitation services being offered,” Egan said. The issue lies in repeatedly going to treatment programs that don’t work. He said that ongoing, personal support from those with lived experience is the only effective model.

Despite broad support, not everyone agreed with the bill’s approach.

MacKenzie Bray, executive director of the Salt Lake Harm Reduction Project, testified that restricting syringe exchange programs from parks will not reduce drug use. It will only remove that which prevents fatal overdoses and infectious disease transmission in the places where drug use already occurs.

HB 205 also creates a Structured Treatment and Enforcement Pathway program in justice courts for people charged with probation-eligible offenses tied to substance use. Participants would receive close judicial supervision, regular drug testing, treatment requirements and a mix of sanctions and incentives.

The bill also authorizes district courts to issue off-limits orders that bar people charged with drug offenses from entering specific public places associated with their drug activity.

Clancy said the unanimous vote from the committee reflects the bill’s attempt at balance.

“The fact that there are people who say I'm not going far enough shows that we've tried to build a compromise,” he said.

The bill now moves to the House floor for debate.