Drug Consumption Rooms, Injection Facilities, Overdose Prevention Centers, Supervised Injection Facilities, Safe Consumption Facilities, and Harm Reduction Center – these are the various terms used for a medically supervised place to use drugs. What is the science behind these sites?
John S. Searles, Ph.D. was the Substance Abuse Research and Policy Analyst and Chair of the State Epidemiological Workgroup for the Division of Alcohol and Drug Abuse Programs in the Vermont Department of Health. He retired in 2019. He is currently an appointed member of the legislatively mandated Substance Misuse Prevention Advisory Council and serves on the council’s Equity, Prevention, and Policy subcommittees. He has been on the faculty at University of California, Berkeley, the University of Pennsylvania, and the University of Vermont. He was the Principal or Co-Principal Investigator on several large research grants from the National Institutes of Health. He has co-edited two books (“Children of Alcoholics” and “Alcohol and the Family”) and published over 50 scientific articles in the substance use/abuse field. John earned his doctorate in psychology from the University of California, Berkeley.
