Extended Writing Task Injecting Rooms

question_id: 5511

Are Safe Injecting Rooms the Right Way to Tackle Drug Abuse?

Drug use all over the world has grown to affect a worrying percentage of adults, and governments are constantly waging war on the use of drugs by trying to curtail their easy availability. It is now being increasingly felt in knowledgeable circles that the problem of drug addiction needs to be treated as a social disease rather than as a criminal problem. Safe injecting rooms are being established in many cities all over the world to provide facilities for the users of drugs and decrease the chances of overdosing and the rushing of injections that often lead to deaths.

Dr Dunn of Deakin University has found evidence that drug-related crime has decreased in places where these safe injecting rooms operate. He also says that there is no risk to the community as these SIRs do not encourage the use of drugs. He believes that it has also led to the reduction in the discarding of drug-related paraphernalia in public places, mostly needles, that have often been causing concern for civic authorities by their propensity to spread diseases.

Safe injection rooms are facilities that are medically supervised and legally sanctioned and provide people addicted to drugs an environment that is stress-free and hygienic and vastly reduces the nuisance from the public use of drugs. They can go a long way in reducing the harm of overdosing and other drug-related problems. These rooms also provide sterile injection equipment, information on health care and il effects of drugs, counselling, and other services that impoverished drug addicts can use. In many of these rooms, identification cards are required and this helps to list addicts and allows for other follow up action to help them to get over the addiction. No sale or purchase of drugs is allowed in any of these SIRs. Such rooms did exist earlier, but they were largely facilities run for profit, with no regard to hygiene or other safety for its users who were made to pay substantial sums for their use.

Studies conducted in the Netherlands, Germany and Switzerland in the late 1990s indicated that SIRs improved both public and drug user health and helped to reduce the public nuisance that addicts often caused. Some safe injecting rooms in Australia and Canada were allowed on the condition that they carry out more rigorous research into the effects of these facilities. During these studies, it was found that in spite of these facilities being easily available, the actual utilization of the rooms was about 50 per cent of their capacity. It was also found that a substantial proportion of the users of these rooms use them for just one in every twelve of their use of the drugs. A fifth of the users of these facilities was homeless.

Society itself is highly divided on the introduction of these facilities with public money and funding. Their location close to living centres, schools and public areas is a major cause of concern. Police departments and concerned citizens also point to users of these centres being in possession of drugs, which is against the law, and that these rooms can also be used by dealers for the distribution of drugs. Experience in many European countries has suggested that these programmes of providing safe injection rooms may die a natural death if they are not supported by the community and the drug users themselves. Most of these rooms insist on hand washing, prohibit injecting of others, and do not allow any sharing of drugs or other equipment, and this has been a probable reason why drug users are not keen to use these facilities.