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takyon [soylentnews.org] writes:

What's The Evidence That Supervised Drug Injection Sites Save Lives? [npr.org]

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 [ucsd.edu], a researcher specializing in harm reduction at the University of California San Diego who is researching an underground supervised injection site [ajpmonline.org] [open, DOI: 10.1016/j.amepre.2017.06.010] [DX [doi.org]] 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 [drugandalcoholdependence.com] [DOI: 10.1016/j.drugalcdep.2014.10.012] [DX [doi.org]] 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 [ijdp.org] [DOI: 10.1016/j.drugpo.2018.06.018] [DX [doi.org]] 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 [soylentnews.org]
The Dutch Supply Heroin Addicts With Dope and Get Better Results Than USA [soylentnews.org]

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