Project Solify, a two -year collaboration effort introduced through the European Urban Security Forum, aims at the implementation and sustainability of supervised injection sites throughout Europe.
The smoke obscured the small room where 3 heroin users inflated in transparent pipes, blowing smoke from the corners of their mouths. The smiles have spread on their faces while in a nurse humming two new internal users. More other people with heroin dependence have waited their turn to use new logo syringes in the internal cases of Baluard of the injection room, a drug use in the middle in the modern community of the city of Middle in Barcelona.
With about 700 visits consistent with Day, the medium is the maximum frequented through the nine drug users sites in Barcelona, whose objective is to bring drug users to the streets, reduce crime and save overdose. Customers supply their own medications and get blank and a safe position to use and access services. Social Services Organizations manage sites with investment from the Public Fitness Agency in Barcelona. The personnel monitor drugs for drug addicts, check their drugs in search of ingredients such as fentanyl, provide remedy plans to choose as a metadona or help access social services.
“If I couldn’t come here, I would have died in the street or stolen,” said Juan Carlos Gómez, 47, while scratching his marked arm. His social worker, Noelia Girona Marlos, said that Gomez was arrested through the police, startled or committed other crimes since her arrival in Baluard.
In an effort to spread the good fortune of these centers, and warned through the epidemic of US opioids, the European Urban Security Forum (EFU), an NGO in Paris, introduced the solidify project. Run in January 2018, the effort of $ 62. 7 million for two years (55. 1 million euros) aims to create a network between municipalities with existing medications and other people interested in opening them. The partners exchange information, seek and provide technical assistance.
“The cities are for new tactics to administer these epidemics of medicine,” said solidify Moritz Konradi program. “They had to notice what works in put and what does it in others. “
Ten cities, adding Lisbon, Brussels and Paris, and many organizations participate.
While the first drug use rooms in Barcelona opened their doors in 2004, other cities in Europe have faced a resistance for a long time to bring the concept in neighborhoods that deal with dependence. Residents do not need other people who face drug addiction to their region, and police and politicians do not need to legitimize illegal drug intake.
Lately there are about 90 drugs for drugs throughout Europe, according to the European Drug Monitoring and Drug Addiction Center (EMCDDA), an EU company that monitors drug use in 30 member countries. Each city manages its own services. Some comforts also offer showers, accommodation or psychiatric support. There is still a fatal overdose in a European drug admission room, explains researcher Dagmar Hedrich, the main scientist of the relief of Emcdda misddas.
“Public Fitness officials will have to realize that intake is a component of drug consumers’ life,” says Hedrich. “Before the rooms, we did not know the injection errors committed by the drug addicts, and it is possible that it does not warn them. Now we can save lives.
Studies on Insurance Injection sites in Australia and Canada have revealed that the habit of threats, such as the injection of dirty syringes and that the users they visited were most likely formed with the remedy of drug addiction decreases significantly. The additional knowledge compiled through the staff of the client room is essential to perceive trends in drug use, Hedrich explains.
The United States has not yet opened a drug detection room, due to the federal law that prohibits the maintenance of a location to facilitate the intake of illicit drugs, cities such as Denver and Philadelphia are even in the manufacturing plans phase.
Barcelona’s sites took time to gain ground, explains Oleguer Paes-Badell, a doctor of the public physical conditioning firm in Barcelona. After a primary construction in drugs similar to drugs, crime and general discomfort in outdoor drug markets, police, citizens and politicians despite everything.
“There was enough political will to do something,” said Badell, who supervises the drug use rooms of the city. Now he hopes to convey his good fortune to consolidate the participants. “Now, many European cities are reaching such interventions after hunting in the United States epidemic. Solify is helping us achieve what we already know: we will have to be prepared. »
This article gave the impression on the 2019 spring factor of the magazine with the title: “Safe spaces for users”.
Read more from Tabachnick.
Face Tabachnick is an independent journalist who covers crime, drugs, police and prisons around the world. Lately it is in Spain.
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