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posted by martyb on Saturday September 08 2018, @05:27PM   Printer-friendly
from the Ask-Amsterdam dept.

What's The Evidence That Supervised Drug Injection Sites Save Lives?

Critics say supervised injection sites encourage drug use and bring crime to surrounding communities. Proponents argue that they save lives and can help people in addiction reconnect with society and get health services. [...] But what does evidence say? If the policy goal is to save lives and eventually curb opioid addiction, do these sites work? It's a tricky question to answer, although many of these sites have been studied for years.

At least 100 supervised injection sites operate around the world, mainly in Europe, Canada and Australia. Typically, drug users come in with their own drugs and are given clean needles and a clean, safe space to consume them. Staff are on hand with breathing masks and naloxone, the overdose antidote, and to provide safer injection advice and information about drug treatment and other health services.

But most have grown out of community and grassroots efforts, according to Peter Davidson, a researcher specializing in harm reduction at the University of California San Diego who is researching an underground supervised injection site [open, DOI: 10.1016/j.amepre.2017.06.010] [DX] in the United States. They lack big budgets for comprehensive services or for conducting high level evaluations, he says. Still, he says the research – both "the grey" and the robust - point to the benefits, especially in preventing deaths among society's most vulnerable. No death has been reported in an injection site. A 2014 review of 75 studies [DOI: 10.1016/j.drugalcdep.2014.10.012] [DX] concluded such places promote safer injection conditions, reduce overdoses and increase access to health services. Supervised injection sites were associated with less outdoor drug use, and they did not appear to have any negative impacts on crime or drug use.

[...] However, in another review of studies [DOI: 10.1016/j.drugpo.2018.06.018] [DX] published in August in the International Journal of Drug Policy, the researchers, criminologists from the University of South Wales in the United Kingdom, found that the evidence for supervised injection is not as strong as previously thought. Only eight studies met the researchers' standards for high quality design. And of those, the findings on the effectiveness of supervised injection were uncertain, with no effect on overdose mortality or needle sharing. "Nobody should be looking at this literature making confident conclusions in either direction," says Keith Humphreys, an addiction researcher and psychiatry professor at Stanford University who wasn't involved in the study.

Related: Portugal Cut Drug Addiction Rates in Half by Rejecting Criminalization
The Dutch Supply Heroin Addicts With Dope and Get Better Results Than USA


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  • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 08 2018, @08:32PM (7 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 08 2018, @08:32PM (#732305)

    No, supervised injection sites don't work. What is most effective is fentanyl. Reduces crime, cuts healthcare costs, improves neighbourhoods... win-win-win situation.

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  • (Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 08 2018, @08:53PM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 08 2018, @08:53PM (#732312)

    Maybe, but reducing crime and improving neighbourhoods follows reducing the drug cartels and dealer networks. Fix the legal framework so company's can create easily obtained prescription versions and the overdoses and healthcare costs drops along with the crime. Then you don't have 'black hole' neighbourhoods with a gang turf war erupting every other week.

    • (Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 08 2018, @11:55PM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 08 2018, @11:55PM (#732338)

      The benefits also follow if you eliminate the junkies. Once fentanyl kills them, they're no longer a burden on society (after you dispose of their stinking corpses).

      • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Sunday September 09 2018, @06:39AM

        by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Sunday September 09 2018, @06:39AM (#732411) Journal

        The drug suppliers will take care to create other junkies, no worries.
        They used "bait and switch" long before the corporations.

        --
        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
  • (Score: 2) by Snotnose on Saturday September 08 2018, @10:09PM (3 children)

    by Snotnose (1623) on Saturday September 08 2018, @10:09PM (#732326)

    Years ago I had a diabetic cat (I didn't do it, got her from a shelter, took her to the vet and got the diagnosis. No way she was going back to the shelter). Vet gave me a prescription, not for the insulin, but the needles needed to inject her. Stupidest fucking thing I'd ever heard of.

    Turned out the cat did not like getting 2 shots a day, and after a couple weeks I faced facts, quit shooting her up, and about 3 weeks later took her in to be put down.

    Of course, now I've got some 50 needles and nothing to do with them. Asked around, as I owned them they weren't considered sterile so nobody would take them. Ended up tossing them in the trash. I'm sure some heroin addict would have loved to have them, but I don't know any heroin addicts.

    --
    Why shouldn't we judge a book by it's cover? It's got the author, title, and a summary of what the book's about.
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 08 2018, @10:57PM (2 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 08 2018, @10:57PM (#732330)

      Hint: if the state makes it hard for you to get something, and you've already jumped through their hoops to obtain it legally, don't throw it in the trash.
      Suppose you or a friend wants a needle in the future, for whatever reason, and don't have a doctor or vet handy? It's not like you need to rent a storage unit for one box of needles.

      • (Score: 2) by Snotnose on Saturday September 08 2018, @11:52PM (1 child)

        by Snotnose (1623) on Saturday September 08 2018, @11:52PM (#732337)

        Actually, it was a bag of 100 needles. I kept them until I got divorced, then they went into the trash.

        I'm not stupid. I had something hard to get that I didn't need. I hung onto those suckers long as I could, then the wife tossed them.

        --
        Why shouldn't we judge a book by it's cover? It's got the author, title, and a summary of what the book's about.
        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 09 2018, @03:22AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 09 2018, @03:22AM (#732381)

          I can't tell you how much stuff I keep around, not because I need it, but because I *might* need it, and find it impossible to get.

          Then people call me a "hoarder".

          But I feel so stupid throwing away something when I know good and well that once its gone, its gonna take an act of God to get another. Whether it be an obsolete IC, or a banned chemical.

          How about those guys who stocked R12 when it was 69 cents a can?

          I get the idea that even old computers could instantaneously jump tremendously in value should civil unrest arise and people suddenly realize all the newer computers have backdoors that can't be programmed around, and they still need to communicate. Simple things like a C compiler and books on things like programming TCPIP stacks in C++ or assembler worth more than their weight in gold. As nothing coded in the last 20 years or so can be trusted.

          I can probably trust an old 3COM 3C905 board driven under my own C++ program under DOS on a 386SX to do specific custom tunneling protocols, where I pick some random port and fit the message I want to send into ONE packet, do a port knock to let my recipient know its me, then accept the packet and decrypt the payload. Stuff like that I could hide and make it look like a stray packet from a video streaming app.