Nurses Watch as Addicts Inject Safely in Denmark's 'Fixing Rooms'
They're called "fixing rooms" and the one in Copenhagen is taking its 8,000 addicts off the streets in an effort based on the idea: If you can't get them to stop, at least get them off the streets.
The room, which is located in the Vesterbro district, has given addicts a place to use class A drugs without being prosecuted. Eight people at a time, and another four in a van parked outside, inject their drugs. During the process they're watched by nurses who ensure that the environment is as clean as possible; with sterile needles, saline, cotton buds and a pump. A large drawing of a man even shows the addicts the locations of main veins and arteries, and a machine will illuminate a healthy vein for them to spike, The Guardian reported.
All of this in an effort to try to wean the addicts off of their drugs, after all, the ones that come to the room don't want to die.
"With cocaine you want it more and more and more. If you have it, you take it," Maja Petersen, 38, told The Guardian. "I hate life. I don't have a life anymore. But I have never taken too much. I have never tried to die."
There have been more than 49,000 injections at the room since it opened in October. Although the occasional fight breaks out, The Guardian described it as having the atmosphere of a library. Nurses have dealt with 36 overdoses since it opened, but none of them have been fatal.
Every day health professionals and social workers offer treatment but only five have accepted it so far.
Adding to the benefits of the room, the number of syringes and drug paraphernalia picked up off the streets has been cut in half. Up to 10,000 dirty syringes were picked up off the streets each week. There's also been a decrease in burglaries by three percent and vehicular theft and violence has gone down five percent.
"There is no country that has solved this problem, so surely, until we solve it, we can meet their basic needs," Michael Olsen, a local resident who helped persuade authorities to approve the room, told The Guardian. "We don't do this to get people out [of drugs]. We are happy when we do, but at first it is helping people in the situation they are in."