Mindy Vincent says she was addicted to meth and heroin for 17 years. This April, she will be 18 years sober, and for the last 15 years, she has been working as a clinical social worker. Now, as the founder of the Utah Harm Reduction Coalition, Vincent operates a syringe exchange program in Utah, which provides clean syringes to intravenous drug users in the hopes of limiting the spread of disease.
Last week, she testified at the Capitol in favor of a bill sponsored by Rep. Tyler Clancy, R-Provo, a Provo police officer. The legislation, HB199, is a wide-ranging substance use treatment bill that aims to regulate syringe exchanges and medication-assisted treatment providers in Utah, allow for mobile medication-assisted treatment sites and encourage first responders to offer substance use and mental health services when responding to overdoses.
Clancy and Vincent agree they are unlikely allies, but in recent weeks they have come together to craft a bill both are proud of.
“I really like the bill. I think it is very fair and moderate,” Vincent said in an interview with The Salt Lake Tribune. “For a law enforcement officer to put forth such a solution-based bill without a bunch of criminalization and penalties attached to it — to me, it’s renewed my hope in legislation, honestly.”
Vincent said that she was generally supportive of regulations for syringe exchange. “I think when you’re working with vulnerable populations that you have to be accountable,” she said.
But when she spoke in front of the House Health and Human Services Committee last Wednesday, she had one major concern with the bill, the original draft of which would have limited where her organization could perform syringe exchanges, banning the practice in any drug-free zones, including schools, shelters, parks and churches.
“If we’re limited on some of our locations, we will not be able to reach many of these people,” Vincent told the committee. “Being the longest provider of syringe exchange in the state, I know what happens when our locations are restricted: We will see overdoses go up, we will see disease transmission go up and we will not get as many people into treatment.”
Vincent said that while the group does not run exchanges in most of these areas, she believed the language was too strict. “We don’t do them at schools, daycares, churches, and we typically don’t do them in parks either,” she said. Still, she wants to be able to meet the people who need her services where they are, including some parks in the Salt Lake area where she knows there is a need.
“My biggest thing is I want to make sure that at locations where there shouldn’t be drugs, and I can tell you my specific intent is with homeless shelters and permanent supportive housing … that we are not permitting drugs on the premises,” Clancy told the Tribune. “As I talked to Mindy, she’s actually okay with that.”
By Thursday, Clancy released a new version of the bill honing in on that specific concern, changing the bill to state, “An entity operating a syringe exchange program may not facilitate the exchange of syringes at a homeless shelter… or permanent supportive housing,” the new language read.
(Rick Egan | The Salt Lake Tribune) Rep. Tyler Clancy, R-Provo says a few words in the house, on Thursday, Feb 6, 2025.
‘Hearts in the same place’
In an interview Friday, Vincent said she felt the change was fair and addressed her concerns. “It’s the wildest thing ever,” she said. “Typically, harm reductionists and law enforcement officers are not usually on the same page with policies ... We have the same outcome goals, the same desires. Our hearts are in the same place, and it is so beautiful and rejuvenating to work with someone who believes just like I do in the process of recovery.”
Clancy agreed. “The more that we box ourselves in and say, ‘Well, I’m in this camp, you’re in that camp,’ well, you’re certainly not going to find any [common ground],” he said in an interview. “What I think this conversation has done is brought everyone into the rooms together, and we probably realize that we actually agree, I’ll say, 70%. A lot of what we do, we agree on, and then we have really robust debates about the 30% to try to get closer.”
The 30% where Vincent and Clancy disagree mostly centers on a controversial harm reduction strategy known as supervised consumption sites — sanctioned facilities where people can use drugs in the presence of medical providers, who can provide medicines like naloxone, which can reverse opioid overdoses, as well as point people to treatment options.
Last month, the Utah Department of Health and Human Services reported 606 overdose deaths in the state in 2023, up 14.3% from the previous year.
(Leah Hogsten | The Salt Lake Tribune) Mindy Vincent estimates she's handed out 3,200 syringes to heroin addicts along Rio Grande Street in 2017.
Vincent has tried to push for legislation that would allow for supervised consumption sites in Utah, but has stopped lobbying lawmakers on the issue for now. “It goes nowhere,” she said. “Safe consumption sites overall, they are the most effective overdose prevention, but I also see [Clancy’s] point if they don’t actually reduce substance use.”
Clancy, in fact, aims to officially ban the sites in Utah with this bill. “What I’m trying to do is just be very clear: In Utah, we don’t endorse this type of harm reduction,” he said. “I’m not convinced that it does save lives.”
But, he added, he sees harm reduction work generally as an important puzzle piece. “We’ve got to keep people alive,” he said. “The idea is we want to build warm connections, build these trusted relationships.”
As far as supervised consumption sites go, Vincent is okay with playing the long game. “We’re so many years from being able to pass some kind of safe consumption site legislation here in Utah that I really feel like I didn’t give up anything compromising on that,” she said. “Plus, this gives me what? Like, probably 10 years to get Clancy on my side. That’s a lot of time.”
Clancy’s bill was approved unanimously by the House Health and Human Services Committee last week and will soon come to the floor for a full House vote.
