COPENHAGEN: Fixing a city’s drug problem with an integrated approach

Philip O’Connor looks at a city’s attempts to take drug users off its streets through a ‘fixing room’ with hygienic facilities, meals, beds and treatment programmes

THE sterile stainless steel bench gleams under the spotlight as he lays out his equipment — cotton swabs, a syringe, and a small brown package that the dealer has told him is heroin and cocaine, but is most likely cut with everything from over-the-counter painkillers to horse tranquilisers.

Under the watchful eye of a trained counsellor, he prepares the dose carefully, sucks it up into the syringe, finds a vein in his groin and plunges the contents into his bloodstream.