Vancouver Reduces Drugs Through Safe Drug Use Environment

Slate‘s latest Dispatch article is an interesting piece on the safe drug use system in Vancouver (which is legal):

Addicts arrive with drugs scored on the streets and inject them in a supervised environment, 18 hours a day, 365 days a year. A counter was laden with clean needles, sterile water, cookers, filters, tourniquets, alcohol swabs, condoms. The database includes more than 2,000 users, identified only by code names, and an average day will see 645 injections. There are always two staffers and two nurses on duty, standing by with oxygen masks and syringes of the overdose drug naloxone. To date they have intervened in more than a thousand overdoses without a single death.

The idea of supervised injection sites is not original to Vancouver. There are approximately 90 worldwide, in eight countries: The first was opened in Bern, Switzerland, in 1986, and when Zurich closed “Needle Park,” the Swiss launched supervised injection sites nationwide. The Netherlands, Spain, Germany, and several other European countries followed suit, and a site in Sydney, Australia, opened its doors in 2001. The operating principle is simple: If injection drug use is going to occur regardless, why not create a space that mitigates its dangers? That way, say its proponents, lives will be saved and the spread of disease will be checked. The risks of unsupervised injection are manifold; public drug users are often rushed and are less likely to have sterile equipment and practices.

Addicts arrive with drugs scored on the streets and inject them in a supervised environment, 18 hours a day, 365 days a year. A counter was laden with clean needles, sterile water, cookers, filters, tourniquets, alcohol swabs, condoms. The database includes more than 2,000 users, identified only by code names, and an average day will see 645 injections. There are always two staffers and two nurses on duty, standing by with oxygen masks and syringes of the overdose drug naloxone. To date they have intervened in more than a thousand overdoses without a single death.The idea of supervised injection sites is not original to Vancouver. There are approximately 90 worldwide, in eight countries: The first was opened in Bern, Switzerland, in 1986, and when Zurich closed “Needle Park,” the Swiss launched supervised injection sites nationwide. The Netherlands, Spain, Germany, and several other European countries followed suit, and a site in Sydney, Australia, opened its doors in 2001. The operating principle is simple: If injection drug use is going to occur regardless, why not create a space that mitigates its dangers? That way, say its proponents, lives will be saved and the spread of disease will be checked. The risks of unsupervised injection are manifold; public drug users are often rushed and are less likely to have sterile equipment and practices.

The results are actually surprising:

As a result of the program, they were less likely to share needles and more likely to seek addiction treatment. The data clearly showed lives were being saved, its advocates insisted. “The international scientific community has basically endorsed our findings,” said Kerr. “We thought that would be enough.”

Antagonists of the system see it as encouraging drug use and other drug related crime. On the surface this logic makes sense. Vancouver isn’t discouraging drug use, although they aren’t encouraging it either. The city is simply providing a place to inject drugs safely thereby actually reducing some of the risk of drug use (the article notes that users often don’t have a chance to inject correctly which is a serious health risk in and of itself).

Interestingly, Vancouver’s program has also reduced crime. This too isn’t actually surprising if you think about it. Users don’t have the option to commit drug related or aggravated offenses if they are in an environment that allows safe drug use.

Sadly, the program isn’t in use today but if city officials wonder why drug related deaths or crime statistics have seen an uptick, it won’t be a mystery why.

–Daniel Strauss