"Drug consumption rooms are professionally supervised healthcare facilities where drug users can consume drugs in safer conditions. They seek to attract hard-to-reach populations of users, especially marginalised groups and those who use on the streets or in other risky and unhygienic conditions. One of their primary goals is to reduce morbidity and mortality by providing a safe environment for more hygienic use and by training clients in safer use. At the same time, they seek to reduce drug use in public and improve public amenity in areas surrounding urban drug markets. A further aim is to promote access to social, health and drug treatment facilities (see ‘Service model’).
"Drug consumption rooms initially evolved as a response to health and public order problems linked to open drug scenes and drug markets in cities where a network of drug services already existed, but where difficulties were encountered in responding to these problems. As such they represent a ‘local’ response, closely linked to policy choices made by local stakeholders, based on an evaluation of local need and determined by municipal or regional options to proceed. Facilities for supervised drug consumption tend to be located in settings that are experiencing problems of public use and targeted at sub-populations of users with limited opportunities for hygienic injection (e.g. people who are homeless or living in insecure accommodation or shelters). In some cases clients who are more socially stable also use drug consumption rooms for a variety of reasons, for example because they live with non-using partners or families (Hedrich and Hartnoll, 2015)."
EMCDDA, "Perspectives On Drugs: Drug consumption rooms: an overview of provision and evidence," European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction, June 2018.
