Defining Public Amenity and Related Concepts in the Drug Consumption Room Literature: A Scoping Review

Drug consumption rooms (DCR) are implemented in part to reduce the impacts of active drug markets in their immediate vicinity. This scoping review sought to document the concepts and indicators used to describe the impact of DCRs on the nearby neighbourhood.

We conducted a scoping review of peer-reviewed and grey literature, focusing on evaluations of DCRs and related neighbourhood impacts. Articles were included if they contained research looking at operational DCRs and their impact on the surrounding neighbourhood, available in full text and in English. Four databases (Medline, Embase, SocIndex and Scopus) were searched in October 2023. Grey literature was searched using the Google Scholar search engine.

621 publications were identified and screened; after title and abstract and full text screening, 15 articles explicitly discussing neighbourhood impacts were included. Studies were predominately conducted in Australia (33%, n = 5) and Canada (27%, n = 4). When discussing neighbourhood impacts, concepts 'public amenity' (33%, n = 5) and 'public order' (27%, n = 4) were favoured. Drug-related variables including 'public injecting' (93%, n = 14) and 'publicly discarded needle/syringe' (87%, n = 13) were largely used to measure the impact of DCRs on these neighbourhoods.

Concepts describing impacts of DCRs on surrounding neighbourhoods are inconsistently used in DCR literature. Research shows increased support for DCRs when improvements in neighbourhood amenity are evident. We propose the consistent use of the concept drug-related public amenity, defined as measurable indicators of public drug use and publicly discarded drug-related litter that affect the cleanliness, safety and accessibility of shared spaces.