Shooting up in public bathrooms common.

• Position: Drug Overdoses - Brief article

Drug overdose death rates per year in the U.S. nearly have doubled since 1999. The majority of these deaths involved opioids, with heroin being the most predominant. A survey by the Injection Drug Users Health Alliance found that 60% of active injectors reported using public locations, such as public bathrooms, in the last three months for injections.

"While there are a growing number of syringe exchange programs across the U.S. that provide people who inject drugs with sterile injecting equipment, they are not authorized to offer a safe and sanitary space for injection. As a result, many tend to inject in public bathrooms,'' says Brett Stofko, post-doctoral fellow at the Behavioral Sciences Training in Drug Abuse Research at New York University's College of Nursing.

Public injection has been associated with a variety of health risks and risk behaviors, such as syringe sharing, overdose, abscesses, endocarditis, rushed injection, incarceration, and the transmission of HIV and hepatitis B and C.

Stofko's research team suggests that the operation of supervised...