Bruised And Battered

The city plans to set up one of the country’s first supervised drug-injection sites.

WHEN Brian Abernathy was first asked about setting up a supervised place for people to take drugs, his response was “Hell, no.” The first deputy managing director of the City of Philadelphia, who looks after public safety, says he still feels very uneasy about shooting galleries sanctioned by the city. But a visit to Vancouver, where safe-injection sites have operated since 2003, and to Seattle, which is considering the idea, persuaded him that the help they provide outweighs the risks of encouraging lawbreaking.

The idea is counterintuitive: in the next year the city will permit an NGO to provide a place for drug users to go and inject themselves with potentially lethal drugs, while trying to encourage them to seek treatment for their addiction. Staff will hand out clean needles and administer naloxone, a drug that temporarily reverses heroin’s effect on the brain and jump-starts breathing in those who overdose.

The experiences at more than 100 injection sites in 66 cities around the world, including some in Canada, Switzerland and Germany, speakfor themselves. Safe-injection sites reduce overdose deaths by as much as one-third in the immediate vicinity and lessen injection-related infections and the transmission of diseases such as HIV and hepatitis C and B. They help addicts to seek treatment for their addiction and other medical problems, as well as providing a point of access to municipal housing and social services. And they make neighbourhoods ravaged by drugs safer, by reducing drug use and the disposal of drug equipment in public places.