Posted on February 23, 2017
Source: The Baltimore Sun
"Researchers at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health recommend that Baltimore turn to an unorthodox way of dealing with its heroin epidemic by opening two facilities that provide people a safe place to do drugs.
In a report published and commissioned by the nonprofit Abell Foundation, the researchers suggest opening one facility each on the city's east and west sides. They say such facilities would prevent overdose deaths and other harms that addicts face.
While the idea of so-called 'safe-drug consumption spaces' is just starting to gain traction in the United States, the researchers said such facilities have helped stop deaths in other countries. There are 97 safe spaces in 66 cities and 11 countries, according to the report.
The report comes as the nation faces a growing opioid epidemic that shows little sign of easing. In Baltimore city alone, an estimated 19,000 people inject drugs, and there were 481 fatal overdose deaths during the first nine months of 2016, a 65 percent increase over the same period the year before.
'It is a public health emergency and we need every single evidence-based tool that is at our disposal,' said Susan Sherman, a professor in the Bloomberg School's Department of Health Behavior and Society and the report's lead author."
