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Portugal Debates Setting Up Heroin Injecting Rooms in Prison
NATAP - www.natap.org
Agence France Presse
December 24, 2003
Levi Fernandes
A recently released government report recommends Portugal set
up
heroin injection rooms in prisons, where widespread drug use
is leading
to rising HIV rates among the nation's 14,000 inmates. Nearly
one in
two Portuguese prisoners uses drugs and of those who do, 26.8
percent
use injecting drugs like heroin, said the report. Alarmingly,
the
report concluded that more than three-quarters of those who
use
injecting drugs behind bars share their needles - creating an
ideal
environment for the spread of HIV.
Compiled by the office of Portugal's justice ombudsman, the
report
says 14 percent of prisoners are infected with HIV and 396
prisoners
have AIDS. Along with other communicable diseases like
tuberculosis and
hepatitis, the prevalence of HIV/AIDS helped give Portugal the
highest
rate of prisoner deaths in the European Union last year.
To slow the spread of HIV and cut the death rate among
prisoners,
the report recommended the government set up injection rooms
where
inmates would be provided with clean needles and a place to
shoot up in
a supervised setting.
The recommendation was immediately backed by Portugal's
lawyers
association and by former UN General Assembly President Diogo
Freitas
do Amaral, who currently chairs a commission on prison reform
in
Portugal. "There are unique circumstances in prisons
which can lead one
to adopt a different approach to drugs than that which is
adopted in
the wider society," he said just after the report's
release.
Justice Minister Celeste Cardona, however, has flatly rejected
the
proposal. Instead, government policy will continue to focus on
addiction treatment programs, including methadone replacement
therapy
for heroin addicts, she said.
Fernando Negrao, head of Portugal's Drugs Institute, a branch
of
the health ministry that tackles drug addiction, argued that
injection
rooms could be effective but only after prisons become less
crowded.
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