'GIVE ADDICTS A PLACE TO INJECT'

Places where drug addicts can inject themselves should be introduced
in Oxford, according to a leading police officer and a city councillor.

Chief Supt David McWhirter, Oxfordshire police commander, and Oxford
city councillor Susanna Pressel have both welcomed a Joseph Rowntree
Foundation report which said the UK should introduce so-called
'shooting galleries'.

The scheme already operates in several EU countries, Australia and
Canada.

The report said drug users in an official shooting gallery would
register with a receptionist before moving into a room with injecting
spaces.

It said they would be handed a sterile syringe and items like a
tourniquet and sterile water for dissolving the drug.

Trained staff would be available to observe and help if a user became
ill. Users would go from an injecting space to an area where they
could relax.

The Commons' all-party Home Affairs Select Committee considered
shooting galleries in 2002 but rejected the idea.

Mr McWhirter, who recently called for the Government to think
seriously about legalising drugs, said: "Shooting galleries provide
two benefits.

"They take away drug injecting from disused houses and areas where the
syringes are left for people to step on or children to find.

"The second thing is the addicts get clean needles and also access to
treatment.

"There are a bunch of people at the galleries who can help addicts get
off the drugs, which is what you want in the long term."

Ms Pressel, councillor for Jericho and Osney and chairman of the
central, south and west area committee, said: "I think it might be
possible to put a drugs shooting gallery near the Luther Street
Medical Centre, then it would be close to the services a lot of drug
addicts need. A lot of addicts have never been in touch with the
services that could help them."

Ms Pressel first called for shooting galleries in Oxford two years
ago, when she got the backing of Oxfordshire Drug and Alcohol Action
Team (Daat).

There were 21 drug-related deaths in Oxford between April 2003 and
March 2004. But for the same period in 2004-05 there were 17 and in
2005-06 just eight.