Some San Francisco drug-reform advocates and health officials say that allowing addicts to shoot up in a government-sponsored and medically supervised setting will prevent overdoses and the spread of HIV, but the idea has been met with some skepticism even in this liberal city, the San Francisco Chronicle reported Oct. 19.

The Alliance for Saving Lives is calling on the city to "create a legal Safer Injection Facility staffed with trained medical professionals." Backers include the San Francisco AIDS Foundation, the Mission Neighborhood Resource Center, the Harm Reduction Coalition, and San Francisco General Hospital's Opiate Treatment Outpatient Program.

But Mayor Gavin Newsom said that he doubts any neighborhood in the city would be willing to host the program, not even the notorious Tenderloin. "You put another center in there, you're going to enhance and advance some conflicts that are already there," he said. "I'm not ideologically against it -- I'm just pragmatically concerned."

Vancouver has the only safe-injection facility in North America, but it took a decade of advocacy to get the Insite program established in the run-down Downtown Eastside neighborhood. However, program coordinator Sarah Evans said that Insite now is supported by most Vancouver residents, the mayor and police chief, and even local merchants.

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