As there is no consensus in the community in favor of supervised injecting rooms, it is time to consider alternatives.

Many people believe that more should be done to provide treatment for addiction, and others that addiction should be treated as crime. A wide range of attitudes to heroin addiction can be reconciled by accepting that heroin addicts should be removed from the community, for their own good as well as that of the community.

If a person brought before a magistrate were found to be a heroin user, that person should be placed in detention in an institution operated in accordance with a medical model. A detained person could prove non-addiction through absence of withdrawal symptoms after a prescribed period, and be released.

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