Article for Question #4

Supervised injection site for addicts could save San Francisco money, lives

Addicts regularly use drugs on the streets of San Francisco, and some people there say giving addicts a safe, clean place to shoot up - and clean needles - could help curb overdose deaths and diseases. But critics object to enabling addicts to shoot illegal drugs in a supervised injection facility in San Francisco - or anywhere in the U.S.

A new cost-benefit analysis in the Journal of Drug Issues makes the financial case for a supervised injection site. A 13-booth facility in San Francisco could save $3.5 million a year, mostly in reduced medical costs, the report calculates. The estimate assumes San Francisco would open a center exactly like Insite - North America's first legal supervised drug-injection site built in Vancouver, Canada in 2003. Insite serves an estimated 1,700 people a month. An injection facility in San Francisco would save the life of one drug user who would otherwise die of an overdose every four years and would assist in getting 110 drug addicts medication-assisted treatment each year, the new study suggests. In addition, it would prevent an average of 19 cases of hepatitis C and three cases of HIV infection a year and would reduce hospital stays for skin and soft-tissue infections related to needle use by 415 days a year. "To me, it's really a win-win for everyone," senior author Alex Kral said in a phone interview. "It's a win for the community to get people off the streets, and it's a win for the people injecting drugs to be sure they can be as safe as possible."

Kral and his team assumed it would cost $2 million to buy and renovate a site for a supervised injection facility in San Francisco and $2.6 million a year to operate it. For every dollar spent, $2.33 would be saved as a result of averted overdose deaths, reduced disease transmission and increased drug treatment, the researchers found.

They expect the savings would be greater in other cities where the number of overdose deaths is higher and real estate and operating costs might be lower. San Francisco already slashed heroin overdose deaths from 120 to 13 a year between 2000 and 2012 largely because of widespread distribution of naloxone, a drug that can prevent overdoses by blocking the effects of opioids.

Question 4

Use the following article extract to answer these questions:

a)Consider the benefits of the injection site, discussed below, and explain, for one of the benefits, how it could be monetized

b)Explain what costs or benefits are missing from the study that might result from the injection site.