A bill introduced in the State Assembly by Assemblywoman Linda B. Rosenthal, a Democrat of Manhattan, would help implement safe injection sites by providing immunity to the owners and workers and the drug users who walk in. The bill is still in committee and would likely face an uphill battle in the Republican-controlled State Senate.

“The sites are untried and untested in the U.S.,” Bridget G. Brennan, the special narcotics prosecutor in New York City, said. “The nation’s largest city hardly seems like an appropriate petri dish for such an experiment.”

The new City Council speaker, Corey Johnson, has supported the idea in the past and spearheaded the appropriations for the study when he chaired the council’s health committee. “Drug addiction is an escalating crisis in our communities, with significant implications for public health,” he said on Friday. “Safe injection sites could potentially provide a viable pathway to breaking the cycle of addiction, and I look forward to reviewing the findings of the study.”

The New York Police Department has not taken a position on the issue but is discussing it with the Department of Health.

James O’Neill, the police commissioner, said on Tuesday that his “mind is open, you know, this is — we’re talking about the sanctity of life here. Keeping people alive, but we also have real concerns about quality-of-life and crime issues around that site.”

The first safe injection facility opened in Switzerland in 1988. There are now more than 100 sites in more than 60 cities throughout the world, according to the Drug Policy Alliance. Recently, the idea of safe injection facilities has found a foothold in several cities nationwide dealing with skyrocketing overdose deaths.

San Francisco officials said two privately funded sites could open this summer. Philadelphia announced in January that it would begin a process to implement a site. In Seattle, council members appropriated $1.3 million to study and possibly implement the idea. The mayor of Ithaca, in the Finger Lakes region, proposed the idea in 2016.