Secret US drug injection site shows how supervision could save lives

[S.J.B.]

Secret US drug injection site shows how supervision could save lives
Amanda Holpuch
The Guardian
July 8th, 2020

For five years, a secret supervised drug injection site has operated in the US, allowing drug users to inject more than 10,000 times in a sterile, protected environment.

The illegal operation is modeled after similar, legal sites in Canada and Europe, which seek to provide drug users with a place to get clean supplies, connect with social services and avoid overdosing in a dangerous place.

A study of the underground site published in the New England Journal of Medicine online on Wednesday revealed how lives could be saved if the US were to sanction such facilities.

At the clandestine site, there were 33 opioid-involved overdoses, which were reversed with the medication naloxone, according to researchers at the not-for-profit RTI International and the University of California, San Diego.

“Not only were the 33 overdoses all saved, none of them required anyone calling 911 or being sent to a hospital,” said Alex Kral, an RTI International epidemiologist. “This is a big piece of this – we don’t need to overburden the emergency system with all these overdoses if people are inside, if they have trained people monitoring them.”

Read the full story here.

 

[dopamimetic]

We don’t need to overburden the emergency system with all these overdoses if people are inside, if they have trained people monitoring them.

Exactly this. Even in ER and specially in places where the police will always come together with ambulance, they tend not to know what to do which causes lasting consequences besides the load for health system. A day in hospital is so expensive that such harm reduction sites could easily be paid from the saved money.

It's a shame the US don't yet allow this, but here in Europe we also have countries who don't like Germany with its notoriously conservative and ignorant drug politicians. And it's only the very first step, they need more education about combinations, be allowed to give tranquilizers etc, think the whole drug therapy could be moved out of psychiatry.

And, of course, controlled selling of pure drugs. It should be possible to get the number of drug related deaths (excluding suicide) to almost zero, along with keeping prisons free for the violent offenders and police to catch them instead of addicts.

 

[Jabberwocky]

I used a supervised injecting room when I was using coke years ago and it was their harm reduction advice and assistance into a treatment program that saved me. In that time I saw the staff save half a dozen lives when people OD. Fortunately, in Australia it has been legal for years - although gentrification means it is now in an area drug users have to commute to. There is nowhere near enough of these centres though still.