Drug users and parents who have lost children to overdoses asked lawmakers Wednesday to advance a proposal that would allow the creation of dedicated sites where people can use illicit drugs under medical supervision.

The Mental Health, Substance Use and Recovery Committee held a hearing on Sen. Will Brownsberger’s bill (S 1081) that would allow the Department of Public Health to approve the implementation of “safer drug consumption programs” in Massachusetts, provided the local board of health had already signed off.

In such spaces, also known as supervised injection facilities, people would be able to use drugs they had obtained elsewhere, while supervised by health care professionals or other trained staff.

“These facilities have been shown to not increase drug use but to bring the injections and the people who are injecting already indoors and into the light instead of leaving us out in the cold and into the darkness,” said Aubri Esters, who told the committee she would use supervised injection sites if they were available.

Jess Tilley, who founded an organization called the New England Drug Users Union, said “a great deal” of drug users would take advantage of the sites. She said friends of hers who died from overdoses used drugs alone because they were ashamed and embarrassed.

“If I wasn’t part of this society, I’d be like, you guys are crazy,” she said. “But the point is, people are doing this anyways. People aren’t going to stop using. Recovery for me is not an option....I should not have to die, I should not have to become a statistic because I choose to use an illicit substance.”

Like other states, Massachusetts has been grappling for years with rising opioid overdose deaths and has pursued various strategies to stem the tide.

Before passing its fiscal 2018 budget in May, the Senate agreed to a Sen. Joseph Boncore amendment that would direct state officials to conduct a feasibility study focusing on public health and safety impacts of supervised injection sites. That provision was dropped from the final budget agreed to by a team of House-Senate negotiators.

Earlier this year, Seattle became the first American city to approve supervised injection sites. There are about 100 supervised injection sites in nine countries, including Switzerland, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, Australia and Canada, according to the Drug Policy Alliance.

Opponents of Brownsberger’s bill said the sites could pose a temptation for people in recovery and urged lawmakers to focus instead on addiction treatment and helping people stay clean.

“Why are we giving them the same thing that’s keeping people high and killing them? These are like assisted suicide houses,” said Savina Martin, a Roxbury native who said she has worked in the fields of addiction and sobriety for over 30 years and has been sober for over 25 years herself.

Ronald Hill, who described himself as a recovering addict, disputed the stance of some supporters that the injection sites could be an avenue to steer people into treatment.

“If I’m high, you ain’t going to tell me about no treatment,” he said. “When I hear about treatment is when I got no money and I’m desperate. But when I’m high, you can talk to me all day long, I don’t hear you.”

The concept of supervised injection sites has support from major players in the state’s medical community. The Massachusetts Medical Society voted this year to endorse a state pilot program for supervised injection facilities, and the Massachusetts Health and Hospital Association’s Board of Trustees voted unanimously to advocate for the creation of such facilities.

Dr. Henry Dorkin, the medical society’s president, said in a statement that the group would “offer its staunch backing” if the bill is amended to include “a pilot phase with direct input from – rather than approval by – a state authority, such as the Department of Public Health, which boasts a history of convening qualified expert collaborators to address complex problems.”

“As citizens, we understand that the idea of a space in which an individual can inject drugs already in their possession may be met with initial reticence by some; but as physicians, we cannot ignore the evidence-based arguments that point to SIFs as a roadblock to death and a conduit to treatment,” Dorkin said. “The Massachusetts Medical Society does not condone the use of injectable illicit narcotics, but recognizes substance abuse disorder as a disease and maintains that those afflicted deserve every possible course of treatment. We cannot, in good conscience, sit idly while patients are dying preventable deaths in homes, hotel rooms, in cars or in alley ways.”

Maureen Foster told the committee her son Alex was 28 years old when he died alone in the bathroom of a fast food restaurant after overdosing. She questioned whether things would have been different had he been able to go to a supervised injection site.

“Perhaps he would have visited it and found caring staff who didn’t judge him for being a homeless drug addict,” she said. “Perhaps he wouldn’t have used in that fast food restroom. Perhaps when he overdosed a shot of Narcan could have saved him. Now most of his childhood friends are also gone. We are truly losing a generation of young people and it’s time to make some difficult decisions.”