Lawmakers Across America Join Debate Over Supervised 'Heroin Havens'

Heroin use is an epidemic that is no longer relegated to crack houses and urban neighborhoods.  Addiction to heroin is a growing problem across the globe.

In the Netherlands the problem is so bad that officials have a program that provides long-term addicts with free heroin.

An Amsterdam clinic -- one of three in the Dutch capital --  distributes free, government-paid heroin to long-term addicts so they don't have to commit a crime to pay for their fix. 

In America, a report by the Center For Disease Control and Prevention says the number of heroin users rose by nearly 300,000 in the last decade.

Recently CBN News published and aired the following story on the life-threatening dangers of this drug. Click on 'Heroin: America's Troubling Epidemic Caught on Camera' to see more. 

An alarming 47,000 Americans overdosed on heroin in 2014 and has pushed elected leaders to consider government-sanctioned sites where heroin users can shoot up under the supervision of a doctor or nurse who can administer an antidote if necessary.

Lawmakers in New York, Maryland, California, Seattle and San Francisco all favor the idea of supervised injection sites like the ones in the Netherlands.

But opponents argue such sites are a dangerous idea.

"It's advocated by people who seem to think that the way we should help sick people is by keeping them sick, but comfortably sick," said John Walters, drug czar under President George W. Bush.

Other places have also adopted supervised heroin injection sites, despite risks.

In Sydney, more than, 5,900 people have overdosed since it's Medically Supervised Injecting Center opened in 2001. In Vancouver, British Columbia, about 20 overdoses happen every week, although no one has died.

Meanwhile, in the U.S. such facilities are illegal because police often treat addiction as a law enforcement issue.