As the opioid epidemic rages on across the country, officials back home are exploring ways to buck the trend of overdose deaths and the spread of disease due to dirty needle use.

Denver City Council President Albus Brooks on Tuesday threw his support behind a proposal to provide a safe place for illicit drug users to shoot up under medical supervision, according to CBS4. The facility would strive to reduce overdose deaths from heroin and other drugs with medical personnel on site, considering the roughly 170 drug-related deaths in Denver city and county last year.

The Denver Harm Reduction Action Center (HRAC) floated the proposal during a public hearing in Denver. The center, which provides proper syringe disposal, clean syringes, street outreach and help with mental health/substance abuse treatment among other services, hopes to work with the city on legislation to realize the proposal.

For Brooks, who recently celebrated a year cancer-free, his support was personal, CBS4 reported:

“I had cancer and a 15 pound tumor was removed last year,” Brooks told a crowd of roughly 100 people at the downtown Denver Library on Tuesday. “In the hospital they give you some crazy drugs and I got hooked on opioids.”

Brooks said he had strong medical support from his doctors to “figure out how to get off them,” but realizes not everyone has that support.

HRAC says on its website that while it supports treatment efforts, “the most effective way to prevent the spread HIV or Hepatitis C (HCV) is to stop it at its source: the needle.”

“By meeting drug users ‘where they’re at’ in the spectrum of their use, we encourage any positive changes that our participants are ready and able to make,” HRAC said.

In response to a significant uptick in overdose deaths, Seattle opened the country’s first supervised injection facilities in January, the Washington Post reports. The country has been hit hard by opioid addiction, with overdoses killing a record 33,000 people in 2015, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.