Dr Gillian Shorter asks whether it is time to trial and evaluate an official ‘drug consumption room’, following another year of the highest overdose deaths on record...

Professionally supervised healthcare facilities, DCRs are places where drug users can consume drugs in hygienic conditions and receive help, advice, and support (EMCDDA, 2018). These are clinical spaces where people take their own drugs, using hygienic equipment, under the supervision of trained staff equipped to intervene in an overdose. They aim to reduce morbidity and mortality, public drug use, drug related litter, and promote access to healthcare, social care, and drug treatment. Depending on the service, need, and funding, they might offer needle exchange, counselling, wound care, HIV testing and vaccination, naloxone kits, opioid substitution treatment, and referral to treatment providers. But more than this, they offer kindness and acceptance through simple interventions like a cup of tea, an address for post, laundry facilities, telephone, support with finance, food, and social integration....