05/06/2026
🗣There is no version of the “Safe Medical Treatment and Food Distribution in Parks” ordinance G-7467 that can be implemented without causing preventable harm, suffering, and death. Phoenix deserves better. CARING FOR PEOPLE SHOULD NOT BE A CRIME.
While the Safe Medical Treatment and Food Distribution in Parks is under the guise of creating safety, it will have the opposite effect.
Removing access to care in parks will not remove the need. Instead, it will dismantle critical low-barrier infrastructure that enables people to access care, prevention services, and support. By restricting and criminalizing access to care, the ordinance undermines proven life-supporting, lifesaving, and life-affirming services, pushes people further away from care, and overburdens an already strained emergency response system. Our community is safer and more supported when everyone has access to more services, not fewer.
Alarmingly, the revised ordinance explicitly bans and criminalizes the distribution of intramuscular naloxone (FDA-approved overdose reversal medication) in parks, all while AZ had a 20% increase in overdose deaths in 2025. We need to expand access to life-saving services, not create more barriers by criminalizing care. Syringe services programs save lives. Harm reduction saves lives.
Take action: The message to the Phoenix City Council is clear: Reject the revised ordinance and repeal the original.
Use linktr.ee/rejectandrepeal or scan the QR code for more information and ways to make your voice heard.
