[Stuart]

Originally Posted by Xaccers

They came up with a fantastic idea which on paper looked good, but neglected to take into account what people are like when they've just injected heroine into their viens.

I don't think it was Amsterdam, but one of the other dams, they declared a park a drug decriminalised zone, giving out free needles, and supplying biohazard waste buckets for used ones, and giving advice on how to get off the stuff if people wanted to.

The idea was, drug users could go to the park, get safe needles, and be good citizens and put the used needles in the buckets, and generally just lie about chilling.

If memory serves, and this was several years ago, they were going to try it for 3 months and if successful roll it out across the country.

What happened?
Well your average heroine user doesn't give a flying watsit as to what happens to the needle once they're high.
So the park was flooded with used needles.
This was a park that kids would play in during the day.
The area became a magnet for drug users, and it all got out of control.
People still took overdoses, so they had bodies to clear up along with the drug waste.

I thought that park was in Switzerland, or Austria (not sure which one). By all accounts, the experiment failed big time.