Health outcomes and quasi-supervised settings for street injecting drug use

Abstract

Over a 12-month period during 2000, public injecting in Melbourne's Central Business District (CBD) was displaced by a range of aggressive policing strategies. Public injecting was displaced into quasi-supervised settings such as public toilets and an outreach-serviced laneway. There is a complex relationship between the setting of drug use and acute health outcomes. Over the period of displacement to quasi-supervised settings, there was a specific reduction in the rate of non-fatal overdose per 1000 syringes used in the CBD. The change in setting of drug use was coincident with a change in the location of non-fatal overdose incidents, with limited evidence of differential changes in the num..