The Independent Drugs Commission for Brighton and Hove made, as one of their recommendations, the proposal that Brighton should consider establishing a drugs consumption room where injecting drug users can use drugs safely without prosecution.
The rationale for this recommendation is to cut the high rate of drug-related deaths locally.
Unsurprisingly, there has been huge professional and media interest with all points of view expressed.
I have collated a fairly representative sample via Storify which you can see below:
Please let me know of any particularly interesting views that I can add.
3 Responses
This is an excellent idea; Clean needles, a safe environment, nurses on hand… drug addiction should be treated as an illness, not a crime, and this is a great step in the right direction.
As a pharmacist I agree that addiction is a disease, often brought about by untreated psychological trauma or mental illness. It is often prescribers who want the patient to shut up and go away that get people started with prescription opiates or by inadequately treating acute & chronic pain issues which starts the complex syndrome of psychological addiction. We should give people what they need to feel better where heroin is concerned. Places like InSite also offer something illicit back alley drug use doesn’t, the opportunity to be exposed to detox and recovery counselors when the addicts can look around and see where their addiction will take them in the future by observing others who are still hooked with no way out except rehabilitation.
Anyone expressing a view that does not wish to see any safe rooms in the UK need only to look at Switzerland.
Their clinical model turned off the youth, now the rate us heroin use that plummeted.
Safe injecting rooms work, the only real issue ought to be where they are placed. By making this a health issue you take a large percentage of crime out of the equation.