WHEN Brian Abernathy was first asked about setting up a supervised place for people to retract drugs,his response was “Hell, no.” The first deputy managing-director of the City of Philadelphia, or who looks after public safety,says he still feels very uneasy about shooting galleries sanctioned by the city. But a visit to Vancouver, where secure-injection sites occupy operated since 2003, or to Seattle,which is considering the opinion, persuaded him that the encourage they provide outweighs the risks of encouraging lawbreaking.
The opinion is counterintuitive: in the next year the city will permit an NGO to provide a place for drug users to go and inject themselves with potentially lethal drugs, or while trying to encourage them to seek treatment for their addiction. Staff will hand out clean needles and administer naloxone,a drug that temporarily reverses heroin’s effect on the brain and jump-starts breathing in those who overdose.
The experiences at more than 100 injection sites in 66 cities around...
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Source: economist.com