In Denmark, utility rooms are largely concentrated in certain buildings. The largest unit has 10 rooms for injecting and 20 rooms for smoking drugs.
COPENHAGEN An area opens up behind Copenhagen’s main train station, with trendy bars, high-quality restaurants next to each other – and the largest concentration of drug users in Northern Europe.
Paramedic Jani Keto works for the Mændenes Hjem organization, which runs a dormitory for the homeless, a cafe and, as is known, the world’s largest drug use facility, the H17 room. 500–1,000 users come there every day.
– You see all kinds of people here. Young, old, men, women. Locals, refugees, lots of Swedes on weekends. I have also met many Finns, says Keto.
Over the years, he has witnessed many cases where a visitor to a drug use room becomes a former visitor.
– Operating rooms prevent drug deaths, create a safer and more valuable environment for users. It creates a relationship with the user and they can be referred to further treatment.
The H17 building has a total of 10 rooms intended for injection use and 20 for smoking drugs. There are fewer rooms in other drug use units in the country. The rooms are separated from each other by glass walls, so the employees have visual access to the rooms.
Although the area surrounding the H17 building is not dangerous, Keto does not want to go right next to the wall of the building with the cameraman, because drug users may behave unpredictably.
The work in the drug use room is hard. At the moment, Keto works in a quieter environment at a shelter for the homeless, but says that maybe one day he will return to work in the utility room again.
He thinks for a long time about the answer to the question of whether utility rooms have negative aspects.
– It’s sad to see how many people enter the rooms every day. That so many people have this disease, drug addiction.
Fewer overdoses than before
In Denmark, drug use rooms became legal in 2012. Currently, in addition to Copenhagen, rooms are maintained in the municipalities of Odense, Aarhus and Vejle.
According to the Ministry of Health, the number of active drug users and overdose situations in the capital’s operating rooms has decreased significantly. In other municipalities, the changes are not as clear.
The number of people referred to treatment from drug use rooms – as well as the number of all users in treatment in Denmark – has increased in recent years.
According to Statistics Denmark, in 2021 a total of around 20,000 people were covered by the treatment. Five years earlier, there were three thousand fewer of them.
However, the number of drug overdose deaths in Denmark’s capital region has risen somewhat in recent years – this figure also includes deaths recorded in places other than operating rooms. In the rest of the country, drug-related deaths have decreased for many years in a row.
With free heroin, the chance to get dry
In addition to drug use rooms, five Danish municipalities operate heroin clinics that offer drug users free, doctor-prescribed heroin twice a day.
Adults who have already been in regular replacement therapy and who are not pregnant, have a long-term illness or drink alcohol are entitled to the dose.
In Denmark, heroin clinics have mixed results. For many, the clinic has been a place to go dry, when the amount of pure substance has gradually started to decrease. At the same time, instead of hunting for drugs, time has been left for other moments that give hope – for example, a phone call to family.
In some clinics, however, it has been found that the staff has too little time for social work and meetings. In addition, some users have moved on to other substances, for example excessive use of alcohol.
Denmark’s heroin situation is clearly different from Finland.
In Finland, heroin deaths have practically disappeared from the statistics, and for years the most common cause of overdose has been Subutex, which is used as a replacement drug to treat opioid addicts.
A stabbing room on wheels
In Copenhagen, there is a Fixelance van parked near the H17 building, a concentration of drug users. It is a small and mobile drug use room, whose entrepreneur in the social sector Michael Lodberg Olsen founded already a year before the legalization of actual utility rooms.
In addition to the concentration of drug users, the van goes where many other users typically are, for example to different neighborhoods and in front of women’s shelters.
– I had seen a mobile drug use room in Edinburgh and I thought we should get this as well. In Denmark, drug rooms were still illegal at the time, but we set it up anyway. And the authorities did not intervene, Olsen says.
Fixelance works mostly with volunteers and mainly on weekdays during the day. Lodberg Olsen’s only paid employee is a nurse Mie Dahl-Hansen. He gives the users clean equipment and, if necessary, a nasal spray containing naloxone, an antibody that must be used immediately in the event of an overdose.
In other operating rooms, nasal sprays are only available for nurses, but you can also take one with you from Fixelance. The idea is that you can save a friend’s life with the spray.
A young nurse does not feel uncomfortable in a small space that can accommodate one to three users at a time.
– It’s calm here, this is a wonderful workplace. Sometimes we stay with the users just to chat, sometimes they even bring me coffee and chocolate, Dahl-Hansen describes.
According to the Fixelance team, since 2019, there has only been one overdose in the car. At that time, a person could be saved with the help of a nasal spray.
According to the employees, in and around the supervised and safe space, overdoses and violent commotions do not easily happen.
“Use the utility rooms as soon as possible”
Michael Lodberg Olsen knocks out large, multi-room drug use facilities, but he has a clear message for Finland about the use rooms.
– Deploy them as soon as possible, but make them mobile or small units where the drug users are. It is an economically reasonable, efficient and humane solution.
Paramedic Jani Keto also says that Copenhagen’s H17 is too big for use. In his opinion, the practices of Danish drug use facilities might also be too relaxed for Finland.
However, drug use rooms should at least be tried in Finland, says Keto.
– In Denmark, they say that society is known for how it treats its weakest. This is what I would like to say to Finland. The idea of not leaving a friend is not only a military skill, but also a civic skill, Keto says.
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