Fall River Council Presses Seven Hills Over Harm Reduction Bags

City councilors in Fall River, Massachusetts, are demanding answers about the harm reduction bags that Seven Hills Behavioral Health hands out in the city, after a council review of the kits turned up glass pipes, cookers and 20 syringes alongside Narcan and condoms. The dispute, which surfaced at a council meeting this week, puts a state-recognized overdose prevention practice under local political scrutiny in a city hit hard by the opioid crisis.

Council President Cliff Ponte walked colleagues through the contents during the session, item by item.

"You can get Narcan, and you can also get bleach, sterile pads, Band-Aids, condoms," Ponte said. "Then there are 20 syringes in two separate little bags, and then there's this little bag, and this one kind of freaks me out. You get two glass pipes. Do you see a problem with that? I do."

What the bag actually contains

The bag Ponte described matches what the Fall River Reporter documented after obtaining one: a brown paper bag marked with the provider's name, holding five smaller plastic bags. Three carry supplies — two glass pipes, tourniquets, antiseptic towels, a small mirror and razor, a metal cooker, lip balm, condoms, gauze and bleach — and two carry ten syringes each.

Seven Hills operates syringe services in Fall River and neighboring New Bedford. The nonprofit's public materials describe syringe services programming in general terms; the smoking supplies and cookers in the kits have drawn most of the objections.

Councilor Linda Pereira focused less on the contents than on the handoff. Recipients are not asked for identification, she said, which raised a question about minors.

"Does that mean somebody who's 16 or 17 could get a bag if they look a little bit older?" Pereira said. "That's kind of concerning."

A council split on how to respond

Not every member favored confrontation. Councilor Shawn Cadime urged his colleagues to slow down and open a conversation with the provider before drawing conclusions.

"We should try to get a better understanding of what their intent is," Cadime said.

Seven Hills, asked about the bags by WPRI 12, said the purpose is safety. A spokesperson said the goal is to prevent fatal overdoses and the spread of infectious disease.

That rationale is the standard defense of safer-smoking supplies, and it rests on a straightforward clinical argument: people who smoke drugs rather than inject them are at lower risk of overdose and of bloodborne infection, but sharing or reusing improvised pipes causes burns, cuts and the transmission of hepatitis C and other pathogens. Distribution programs also function as a doorway — the person who comes in for a pipe can be offered naloxone, fentanyl test strips, wound care and a referral into treatment.

Massachusetts is among the states that do not prohibit possession or distribution of drug paraphernalia, according to the R Street Institute, which has tracked safer-smoking policy across the country. Federal money is a different matter. In February 2022, after political backlash over the Biden administration's $30 million harm reduction grant program, Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra and White House drug policy adviser Rahul Gupta said federal funding would not pay for pipes "directly or through subsequent reimbursement of grantees," even though the grant solicitation had listed safe smoking kits among eligible items. Smoking supplies in the field are paid for with state, local or philanthropic money.

Why local fights over kits keep recurring

Fall River is not the first municipality to discover what is inside the bags. Boston has defended distributing pipes since 2022, and syringe programs across the Northeast have faced similar objections from officials who learned the details from constituents rather than from the providers.

The tension tends to follow the same shape: public health agencies treat the supplies as equipment for preventing infection and death, while elected officials treat them as a statement about whether a city condones drug use. Neither side disputes that the bags contain what they contain.

For people already in treatment or trying to enter it, the practical question is whether the dispute interrupts services. Seven Hills has not said it will change what it distributes, and the council has not announced a vote on the program. Ponte and his colleagues said they are seeking answers from the nonprofit.

Residents looking for treatment for opioid use disorder in the region can be assessed for outpatient care, intensive outpatient programs or residential placement depending on their needs, regardless of how the bag debate resolves.