Injecting centres for addicts demanded

Special centres where drug addicts can inject themselves under medical supervision should be introduced in the UK, health experts said.

The centres, which have already proved successful in other countries, mean that nursing staff are on hand to deal with overdoses and other complications.

They can also give safer injecting advice, including guidance to help addicts stop using, but do not supply drugs or help users to inject

Writing in the British Medical Journal, Dr Nat Wright and Charlotte Tompkins of the Centre for Research in Primary Care, Leeds, said the centres should be piloted in the UK as part of an integrated public health strategy.

"We believe that such a clinical approach is not condoning or promoting drug use," they said.

"Indeed, similar arguments were used against needle exchange programmes in the 1980s.

"However, such programmes are now part of accepted best practice and have demonstrably improved public health."

The Home Affairs Select Committee recently recommended that a pilot scheme of injecting houses for heroin users should be "established without delay".

But Home Secretary David Blunkett rejected this, saying injecting centres would be supported only as part of a heroin prescribing programme.

The researchers said this decision should be overturned as evidence from an Australian scheme showed that lives had been saved, there had been no increase in hepatitis infections and more addicts started treatment.

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