Dublin ambulances see an opioid overdose every day; many times near the methadone clinics. Do people shoot heroin around methadone clinics? Yes. The common sense confirms anecdotal evidence from everyday experience of clinic staff and methadone users. Although this is no rocket science for most of us, it’s much harder to prove it.
Just as the presence of storks doesn’t cause the explosion in birth rates, methadone clinics don’t cause people to use and overdose on heroin at their door steps. Most overdoses in our study were within 1000 metres radius around the clinics, it means that they were not in the immediate vicinity of clinics. Regardless of the location, the high number of overdoses in Dublin calls for an immediate distribution of the heroin antidote – Naloxone. Visit my previous post for more info on our pilot Naloxone project.
Cited study: Urban Overdose Hotspots: A 12-Month Prospective Study in Dublin Ambulance Services http://www.ajemjournal.com/article/S0735-6757(14)00510-5/abstract
Study authors:
Received: June 6, 2014; Received in revised form: June 26, 2014; Accepted: July 2, 2014; Published Online: July 30, 2014
Publication stage: In Press Accepted Manuscript