Managing IV drug abuse and its associated drug litter is an almost impossible task. Requiring the involvement of many different agencies, the solutions are impossible to identify and in general the problem is pushed into tighter and tighter corners, moved on, but never really solved.

In Australia, the tricky question of managing a particular hotspot had to decie betwen facing up to teh inevitability of IV drug use and providing accessible sharps bins. Seen by some as a failure properly to manage the problem, but as others as a practical step toward health protection and litter management, this was always going to be controversial.

An alterntaive plan was increased police intervention backed up by the extensive use of CCTV. Either approach would cost a substantial sum, though each would have to be mutually exclusive. No IV drug user would consider discardeing needles into a secure sharps bin covered by CCTV almost guaranteeing a visit to the big house!

Fortunately, common s