SAFE-INJECTION SITE CUTS PUBLIC ORDER PROBLEMS, STUDY FINDS

VANCOUVER - Fewer syringes are being discarded in public and there is
less public injection drug use a year after Vancouver opened North
America's first medically supervised safe-injection site, say authors
of a new study released today in the Canadian Medical Association Journal.

Dr. Evan Wood and his B.C. Centre for Excellence in hiv/aids
colleagues assessed the clinic's impact by measuring injection-related
public order problems during the six weeks before and the 12 weeks
after the site opened. They looked at the number of drug users
injecting in public, publicly discarded syringes and injection-related
litter as indicators of the site's relative success or failure.

The authors said their findings are not surprising given that
feasibility studies showed drug users who inject in public would be
the most likely to use safer injecting facilities. Even though there
are such facilities in Australia and Europe, this is the first
published standardized evaluation of their success.