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SAN FRANCISCO — City health officials took steps Thursday toward opening the nation's first legal safe-injection room, where addicts could shoot up heroin, cocaine and other drugs under the supervision of nurses.
Hoping to reduce San Francisco's high rate of fatal drug overdoses, the public health department co-sponsored a symposium on the only such facility in North America, a 4-year-old Vancouver site where an estimated 700 users a day self-administer narcotics under medical supervision.
Sixty-five similar facilities exist in 27 cities in eight countries
Drug overdoses represented about one of every seven emergency calls handled by city paramedics from July 2006 to July 2007, according to San Francisco Fire Department Capt. Niels Tangherlini. The number of overdose deaths has declined from 160 in 1995 to 40 in 2004, he said.
Colfax said there are 11,000 to 15,000 intravenous drug users in San Francisco, most of them homeless men. The city operates a clean-needle exchange program to reduce HIV and hepatitis C infections.
Vancouver's InSite program, exempt from federal drug laws, is located in a downtown building where drug users have access to 12 private booths to inject drugs such as heroin, cocaine or crystal.
While 800 overdoses have occurred on the premises, Thomas Kerr, a University of British Columbia researcher who has studied the program, said none of them resulted in death because of the medical supervision provided at InSite.
His research also has shown an increase in addicts seeking drug treatment and a decrease in abandoned syringes, needle-sharing, drug-related crimes and other problems since the clinic opened, he said.
I know this site has more than its fair share of rednecks and Kanadian Krakkkers but let me ask you one simple question anyway: Do you prefer that these human beings die?
When Plan A isn't working it's time to try Plan B. As much as you might hate drug addiction you have to admit that making criminals out of junkies has not been an effective strategy. Heroin has been illegal for what, 60 years? It's time to be more concerned about successfully responding to a serious problem than venting one's moral outrage.
Right on, Justice Pitfield, you've got balls and brains!
CKA Elite 
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