FIGURES POINT TO REDUCED DEATHS

No heroin addict has died of an overdose in a supervised injecting room
since the first centre opened in Bern, Switzerland, 14 years ago, according
to overseas research.

There has been little evaluation of the injecting centres scattered around
Germany, Switzerland, the Netherlands and Austria since the first opened in
1986, but statistics published in the International Journal of Drug Policy
suggest that, combined with broader "harm-minimisation" policies, they have
succeeded in saving lives and reducing the street crime associated with drug
use.

The figures, cited by international drug policy organisation, the Lindesmith
Centre, show a dramatic reduction in street crime in the German city of
Frankfurt since the harm minimisation approach was adopted in 1991.
Frankfurt's first injecting centre opened in 1994.

Australian Drug Law Reform Foundation president Dr Alex Wodak said the most
persuasive statistic was that there had not been a single fatal overdose in
a supervised injecting room in almost 15 years.

He said one in five heroin injections resulted in the user "keeling over",
wherever they injected, but they were far more likely to be resuscitated in
an injecting room than outside.

Dr Wodak said harm minimisation measures, including supervised injecting
rooms, were no longer controversial in Europe, but accepted. He criticised
Prime Minister John Howard for closing his mind to the overseas evidence.

"It seems this is only controversial in Kirribilli," Dr Wodak said.

A 1998 New South Wales joint select committee report on injecting rooms
referred to the German experience, where "roughly 1200 injections a day
corresponds to a cut in the annual number of overdose deaths of around 70".

It also concluded, based on overseas evidence, that injecting centres may
reduce public nuisance, such as the number of used syringes, and the kind of
street crime that was a result of users being under the influence.

Dr Wodak said it was difficult to evaluate the effectiveness of European
supervised injecting rooms because they coincided with changes in
law-enforcement and the introduction of more drug treatment and
rehabilitation programs.

But the Lindesmith Centre research found Swiss injection centres had
encouraged users to take fewer health risks, and had resulted in fewer
syringes discarded on Swiss city streets.

It said fatal overdoses in Frankfurt had peaked at 147 in 1991, and fallen
to 26 in 1997.