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Out Of The Alley: Lessons From Safe Injecting Facilities (Sif), David Monico

Graduate Annual

intervention. Heroin and cocaine, two commonly injected drugs, highly contribute to overdose death. Overdose is now the number one cause of unintentional death in the United States. Those who inject drugs are also at risk of infectious diseases such as HIV and HCV. Current methods to reduce the harms associated with injecting drug use are not meeting the needs of injecting drug users (IDUs). In many parts of the world, injecting drug use is tolerated and permitted at supervised facilities where medical staff are available as needed.

To determine if such facilities are possible in the United States this literature …