As Brussels expands its network of supervised drug consumption rooms—known euphemistically as “safe injection sites”—the city risks entrenching a failed policy that prioritizes harm management over true recovery, mirroring disastrous outcomes seen in New York City and reported by Freedom Mag
Escalating Use, Not Recovery
Brussels’ first such facility, GATE, opened in 2022 near the Midi station, followed by LINKup on December 15, 2025, with a larger integrated centre planned for 2026 along the canal. Proponents claim these sites reduce street drug use by providing sterile needles, on-site medical intervention, and a “social” space for injecting heroin, snorting cocaine, or smoking crack. Yet New York City’s OnPoint centres, operational since 2021, reveal the reality: daily visits surged over 100%, overdoses rose 7% from 2022 to 2023 (636 to 683), and at least 46 users suffered life-threatening cardiac arrests, strokes, or heart attacks requiring ambulance transport—outcomes operators fail to track long-term. In Brussels, where over 1,000 users (half homeless) have flocked to GATE by mid-2024, this model normalizes addiction rather than dismantling it, boasting “thousands of uses off the streets” while ignoring sustained recovery rates.
Threat to Public Health and Children
Far from safeguarding health, these rooms facilitate repeated exposure to destructive substances, undermining personal and public well-being. New York’s 3,156 users logged 61,184 visits in 2023 alone, including 177 daily “clients” (up 108% year-over-year), with staff intervening in over 1,700 overdoses amid tens of thousands of heroin injections, crack smokes, and speedball hits. Brussels’ sites, clustered near transport hubs and neighbourhoods like the halted Molenbeek project (suspended by the Council of State over safety and nuisance fears), expose children to drug paraphernalia, dealers, and overdoses in family areas with schools. US Representative Nicole Malliotakis calls them “heroin shooting galleries” that attract crime and erode quality of life, a warning echoed in Brussels’ narco-violence linked to Antwerp cocaine floods. Children’s security demands zero-tolerance zones, not state-sanctioned drug dens.
Economic Drain on a Productive Nation
Belgium’s legal grey zone—under a 1921 law criminalizing premises for illegal drugs—allows these experiments via prosecutorial tolerance, but at what cost to taxpayers and society? Funding sterile booths, naloxone, and staff diverts resources from prevention, while fostering dependency that erodes workforce productivity: addicts cycle through welfare, missing education and jobs essential for a competitive Europe. Former DEA official Jim Crotty insists the goal cannot be mere survival; drugs’ destructiveness demands cessation, not facilitation. Manhattan Institute expert Charles Lehman notes operators ignore long-term outcomes, prioritizing visit counts over cures. For Brussels, a hub of EU institutions, this signals resignation, weakening the productive nation needed for innovation and growth.
The Proven Alternative: Education Over Enablement
Supervised consumption confuses overdose patches with policy success, condemning users to endless highs in “safe” havens while Europe debates shutdowns amid rising crime. True progress lies in education campaigns exposing drugs’ full toll, as proven by initiatives like the Church of Scientology’s Truth About Drugs, distributed to 170 million worldwide and adopted by over 1,000 law enforcement agencies to prevent youth addiction. Liège’s room since 2018 and Brussels’ expansions lack federal backing or outcome data, urging a pivot to demand reduction: school programs, early interventions, and recovery-focused treatment. Policymakers must reject this surrender, protecting health, children, and Belgium’s future through proactive prevention, not permissive drug dens.
