The news media today are headlining the dramatic rise of drug abuse and needle sharing in gyms and sports clubs across the UK, and proposals by NICE to install needle exchange programs within the gym to prevent spread of bloodborne virus disease.
NICE have updated their draft guidelines and slowly, PHE staff will be including high street gyms in their scope of operation while existing needle exchange schemes, often voluntary or charity-funded, will expand to include some gyms in their sphere of operation.
Steroid abuse is rife in gyms. Needle finds in the toilets of even the shiny brand-name gyms has been a problem for cleaners and maintenance staff but has been hushed up to avoid sullying the healthy reputation of the gymnasium. Any help will be invaluable, though ultimately if these pumped up idiots stopped taking illegal and unregulated steroid products their health would be better still. However, , it happens and this new publicity can help if it followed rapidly be those needle exchange schemes and not suppressed by the gym owners, keen to maintain their clean image.
Though there are crime issues involved in the illegal manufacture, distribution and supply of these anabolic steroids and other injectables used as tanning enhancers, safety and protection of public health is ever more important.
Nonetheless, the abuse of injectable drugs is now rife and initiatives such as needle exchange schemes are essential in order to stop the spread of bloodborne virus disease.
This suggests that sharps bins and subsequent disposal should be appropriate for pharmaceutical waste disposal, though colour coding of sharps bins, with the exception of purple-lidded bins for cytotoxics, seems to have fallen largely into disarray.
see also https://www.ianblenkharn.com/?p=6438
see also Further drug abuse in sports and gymnasia
see also Muscle bound sharps users
…and so on!
Indeed, if you search this site for the word GYM you will find much more. Looking back through the archive files you will find much more, going way back to late 2006 when the Clinical Waste Discussion Forum first raised this observation which has subsequently grown massively, to become something of a global health issue.