Drug use in business bathrooms in New York City surveyed
A previous survey of 440 drug injectors in NYC conducted in 2015 by the Injection Drug Users Health Alliance found nearly two-thirds (60%) of active injectors surveyed 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 (SEP) across the U.S. that provide people who inject drugs (PWID) with sterile injecting equipment," said Dr. Brett Wolfson-Stofko, PhD, the lead author and a post-doctoral fellow at the Behavioral Sciences Training in Drug Abuse Research (BST) program at the New York University Rory Meyers College of Nursing (NYU Meyers), "they are not authorized to offer a safe and sanitary space for injection. As a result, many tend to inject in public bathrooms." 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 ...