It will make it easier to trace their whereabouts and arrest the drug dealers . They have been
responsible for killing tens of millions via contaminated needles.
Addict injection centres proposed
Press Association Friday January 9, 2004
Special centres where drug addicts can inject themselves under medical supervision should be
introduced in the UK, two health experts said today.
The centres, which have proved successful in other countries, mean that nursing staff are on hand to
deal with overdoses and other complications.
They can also give safer injecting advice, but do not supply drugs or help users to inject.
Writing in the British Medical Journal, Dr Nat Wright and Charlotte Tompkins of the Centre for
Research in Primary Care, Leeds, said the centres should be piloted in the UK as part of an
integrated public health strategy.
"We believe that such a clinical approach is not condoning or promoting drug use," they said.
"Indeed, similar arguments were used against needle exchange programmes in the 1980s.
"However, such programmes are now part of accepted best practice and have demonstrably improved
public health."
The home affairs select committee recently recommended that a pilot scheme of injecting houses for
heroin users should be "established without delay".
But the home secretary, David Blunkett, rejected the proposal, saying injecting centres would be
supported only as part of a heroin-prescribing programme.
The researchers said Mr Blunkett should think again, as evidence from an Australian scheme showed
that lives had been saved, there had been no increase in hepatitis infections and more addicts had
started treatment.
They added that the centres reduced the risk to the general public by cutting the numbers injecting
on the street and the projects targeted homeless and socially excluded individuals.
A home office spokeswoman said: "We have not got any plans to pilot injecting rooms.
"We keep an eye on all international and UK research but in Britain at the moment we have other
methods of reducing harm, such as needle exchange programmes."