In a lime-green room behind Geneva’s main train station, a man is slumped over a chair, the heroin he has just injected taking effect. Around him, a handful of others are in the process of reaching that same state of bliss: administering bands to their arms to produce a vein, unpeeling plastic-clad syringes, exhaling as the needle goes in. Some will return today – maybe a handful of times – to get their hit at one of the oldest supervised drug consumption rooms in the world, where users can take their own illicit substances without fear of prosecution by Swiss authorities.
A state-provided supply of safe injecting equipment, along with tea, croissants and hot showers, may seem an unusual way to handle a citywide drug epidemic, but Geneva’s Quai 9 facility –
