Tonight California governor Gavin Newsom has vetoed a bill that would have supported legal drug injection sites in California.

It's a cutting edge idea in a nation plagued by deaths from heroin fentanyl and other opioids, allow people to inject them safely under supervision.

I think there's people who worry that, it will attract more conspicuous drug use, but of course the point of the centers and what advocates say is that the whole point is to have people use drugs indoors in a safe environment so that there is less public drug use and less paraphernalia like used needles on the street.

The new legislation would have created a five-year trial of these sites in Los Angeles and San Francisco and Oakland.

But in a signed veto letter Newsom said quote worsening drug consumption challenges in these areas is not a risk we can take.

Newsom says he has long supported the cutting edge of harm reduction strategies, telling reporters at the San Francisco Chronicle back in 2018 that he was quote very very open to the idea.

But opponents like the Orange county sheriff's office called the safe injection site proposal a disregard for life, that would accelerate the state's drug epidemic.

They may be new in the U.S, in terms of sanctioned facilities, but they are not new globally, there's additional data showing that they have prevented overdose deaths around the world.

The Centers for Disease Control estimates that in the U.S, drug overdose deaths have been increasing by double-digit percentages each of the last few years, reaching over a hundred thousand in a year.

A sign that traditional tactics may not be slowing the crisis down, until now the u.s has only had privately operated facilities in Rhode island and New York where NBC's Jacob Soboroff took us in December of last year.

Normally I'd be down the block sitting on a stoop, injecting myself in the arm, not caring who's walking by or driving by.

According to the organization running the site on point New York city, the centers in New York have been used more than 30 thousand times since opening late last year.

And have reversed more than 400 overdoses presumably, saving hundreds of lives, but there are still local concerns as well as federal ones.

At the federal level, I think the DOJ has indicated that it's open to some level of permissiveness when it comes to these sites and that would really allow for a lot more of them to open both in New York and across the country.

At the national level, there's a certain level of politics taking place where people are making these political calculations, I'm sure that have to do with elections.

After his veto, Newsom now will not have to explain the sensitive topic on the national stage, should he attempt a run for president? although denying interest he ran this ad just last month attacking Florida politics.

"Freedom, it's under attack in your state." - His veto is a sign that while experts say we need to rethink our approach to drug abuse in this country, even one of its most progressive governors is not ready to commit. Jacob Ward, NBC News San Francisco.