Stein Hoftvedt:

In Norway harm reduction for drug addicts is not something new. Especially from the discovery of the HIV virus it has been difficult for anyone to say that they have themselves to blame, and that anything they would need in maintaining their habits should be as illegal as the drug itself. Norway is needle land. Injecting is the predominant way to use heroin, and many amphetamine users inject as well. It's been a long time since anybody but the lunatic fringes of prohibion protested free availability of syringes, and syringes are both distributed for free or can be bought at apothecaries.

But safe places to inject rise a storm of protests from almost the whole prohibitionist camp, the police included. The foremost argument have been that this would be an acceptance of illegal drug use. They don't really say that it's fine if the addicts continue hasty injections in mall toilets and all kind of public places. But this is most often the alternative for the users called "street druggies". This is users, often heavily addicted and with a plethora of sicknesses, that have no or insufficient places to live and if they are offered a place to live, most often are placed in crowded boardinghouses together with other heavy users. Among Oslo's 6000 injecting drug users, there are some hundreds in this group. Because of prohibitiondriven prices they have to steal, prostitute themselves or beg in the streets to feed their habits. They are the most exposed, the most despised and the most downtrodden people in Norwegian society. And the prohibitionists will not give them a sheltered place to inject so they can be free from the undignified act of injecting in parks and other public places. Prohibitionist ideology maintain it's heaven or hell. Either abstain or go, well, to hell. Anything else would not only be "acceptance", but could actually tempt young people to try drugs...

Above: A crack in the wall: Members of one of the largest prohibitionist-led organizations, mothers of drug addicts, demand "Give our children an injection room". Below: The kind of scenery that often introduced tourists to Oslo. (From Dagbladet, an Oslo daily, pressing for the opening of the planned injection room as authorities dragged their feet oh so slowly.)

But reason has it's own way sometimes. Safe injection rooms have been debated for years. It's been said that the present injection room in central Oslo is the first of its kind in our country, but that's not true. "Pro Senteret" operated a small room for injecting prostitutes from december 2000 to february 2001. Norwegian harm reduction activists are aware of experiences from Germany, Switzerland and Canada. They know well that injection rooms are not very revolutionary, but that the can heighten drug user's life standards, lessen marginalization and maybe reduce the numbers of ODs, which are very high in Norway. But the Pro Senter room was closed down by City Council the day after Government found that it could be contrary to Norways obligation to UN conventions. And that could have been the end of it. But later that summer The Guardian and later New York Times declared Oslo to be the "drug capital of Europe". The tourist industry was in danger! The background for this is the Oslo police's thirty year old tradition of herding drug users from one place in the city to another in the vain hope that they sooner or later would end up in a place where they would not be visible to anyone and raise no protests from neighbors or business owners. And so they finally ended up in front of Oslo's central railroad station - and were the first sight that met tourists arriving Oslo! They had to be moved again, but this time the public didn't applaud the process. Enough is enough, and the barbarism of it all was just too plain to see. Not even the Oslo police's repeated claims that hundreds of school children had been intercepted in the vicinity of this place of drug commerce raised much sympathy for their plans, and two sociologists later proved these "information" to be a propaganda hoax. Believe it or not, but school children didn't find it such a great temptation to stand around in a naked place the year round, observed by dozens upon dozens of surveillance cameras and having to shoot up in the bushes and behind containers. So move them, OK, but there should be an alternative. You don't just treat humans worse than you would animals. In spite of the present government's resistance, parliamentary pressure brought forth a safe injection room, and city council promised some plans for housing for the most devastated users. Today the injection room and its users, other street druggies and a substantial part of the city's street prostitutes are pressed together in a few city streets. And tourist guides have taken to point the district out as a landmark of Oslo. There have been some setbacks. Recently distribution of free syringes have met with some problems because of business protests, and private guards around town have been reported to mistreat addicts found in the "wrong" places even more than before. But the practice of running safe injection rooms in Norway's capital do not seem to be threatened, at least not in the near future.

The safe injection room is used by about 150 addicts and, to the great surprise of authorities, some 50 users they didn't know about, students and regular working people that for the most part had been injecting - often in ways harming themselves - for years. That such a thing could happen was contrary to everything the prohibitionist propaganda had allways told, that it is one shot and you are - more or less - dead. The injection room can safely be said to be harm reduction within the framework of a prohibition that creates problems maybe faster than this kind of enterprises can solve. But a couple of hundred of people can live their lifes in a somewhat less undignified manner, and more safe injection rooms are reluctantly planned. Similar rooms are also suggested - and hotly debated - in Bergen and Fredrikstad.

In the future, maybe safe injection rooms will make available - for free or at reasonable prices - the doses of unadulterated heroin the users need instead of the terrible mix of heroin, smoldered heavy sleeping pills and other harmful substances that can be bought in the streets in Norway. Experiences with this kind of drug distribution might be evaluated and expanded to addicts and users of drugs not actually registered with injection rooms. Staff might give advice on all kind of problems the users have when it comes to housing and social services. They might offer treatment adapted to the real needs and motivations of the users. They might be part of treating drug addicts like regular people with the same rights as others have, included the right to be different, instead of criminals. Drug users could be spared the practice of pushing drugs to others, to prostitute themselves, to steal and sell property stolen from other people, or beg in the streets. They could be spared most of the violence now part of their daily life. There are many maybes that could become realities if prohibition was ever to fall.

Article written for the ENCOD webspot. Published June 2. 2005