United States | Bruised and battered

Heroin in Philadelphia

The city plans to set up one of the country’s first supervised drug-injection sites

|PHILADELPHIA

WHEN Brian Abernathy was first asked about setting up a supervised place for people to take drugs, his response was “Hell, no.” The first deputy managing-director of the City of Philadelphia, who looks after public safety, says he still feels very uneasy about shooting galleries sanctioned by the city. But a visit to Vancouver, where safe-injection sites have operated since 2003, and to Seattle, which is considering the idea, persuaded him that the help they provide outweighs the risks of encouraging lawbreaking.

This article appeared in the United States section of the print edition under the headline “Bruised and battered”

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