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Core Topics => In the Media => Topic started by: Chip on August 03, 2015, 09:30:30 PM
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http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/24/opinion/drug-use-in-public-places.html?_r=0
Drug Use in Public Places
To the Editor:
Re “A Manhattan McDonald’s With Many Off-the-Menu Sales” (front page, July 20):
The destitution that the reporter observed is hardly a “throwback to a seedier era in New York.” Homelessness today is at its highest point since the Great Depression, and 60,000 New Yorkers sleep in shelters each night.
Addiction crosses all social boundaries. This article exploits impoverished drug users, whose activities are out in the open because they have so few places to go. Should people who are poor, and have addictions, be barred from sitting at McDonald’s?
Bathrooms are the most common public place to use drugs in the city. There are solutions. Supervised injecting facilities have existed since the 1980s and are known to reduce public disorder, cut disease transmission, prevent overdose deaths and connect users to treatment and services. A mountain of evidence shows that clients of these facilities are more likely to go to detox and quit injection drug use over time.
A supervised injecting facility in New York would increase access to lifesaving services — and would restore to us all some of the humanity and dignity that this insensitive article is quick to shred.
SARAH EVANS
New York
The writer is a senior program officer with the International Harm Reduction Development program of Open Society Foundations.