According to local news station ABC 7, the city of San Francisco is considering installing safe injection sites, where IV drug users can shoot up under the supervision of medical profesionals who will be provide safe injection supplies and nalaxone for overdoses, if necessary. The sites will most likely be modeled after sites in Europe and Vancouver.

When I saw this on the news, Jared said that the only problem he could foresee would be crime. He said that injection sites would attract drug users, which would attract drug dealers, which would attract crime and "turf wars" among different gangs selling drugs. Conventional wisdom might dictate that crime would go up, but a 2006 study of Vancouver's first safe injection site reveals that crime around the safe injection site remained the same one year after the site opened, compared to one year after the site opened. The study tracked three different kinds of crime: drug trafficking, assults and robberies, and vehicle thefts. The first two categories of crime remained the same. Vehicle thefts actually decreased.

The probable location for a safe injection site is the Tenderloin, the home of seedy residential hotels and crack smokers in the city. Mayor Gavin Newsom has said that he is against the idea of a safe injection site, to say nothing of the legality of such a place. Heroin is classified as a Schedule I narcotic under the Controlled Substances Act, and as such, it's illegal -- even for medical uses (which, according to the government, there are none; that's the definition of a Schedule I narcotic). That would be the first -- and maybe the last -- hurdle, but it's a good idea.