DRUG EXPERTS WARN GOVERNMENTS AGAINST LEGAL INJECTION SITES

UNITED NATIONS -- United Nations drug experts warned governments Wednesday
that they risk breaking international law by approving drug injection
centers where addicts can get clean needles and have a safe place to shoot
up.

"Shooting galleries" have sprouted up in the Netherlands, Spain and
Switzerland as an experimental way to get drug users off the streets and
decrease transmission of infectious diseases, such as HIV, that can be
spread by shared needles.

But in a report, the International Narcotics Control Board said such drug
injection rooms "facilitated" drug trafficking and represented the first
step toward legalizing narcotics.

"By permitting injection rooms, a government could be considered to be in
contravention of the international drug control conventions," the board said
from New York.

Governments would violate these laws, the board said, by facilitating,
aiding or abetting crimes of possessing or using drugs "as well as other
criminal offenses including drug trafficking."

The board oversees implementation of UN drug treaties. It noted that such
treaties decades ago were created to eliminate the injection rooms of their
time: opium dens.