Protesting against the lack of efforts on the part of the City of Helsinki to take action on a project that was proposed back in 2019, which called for the establishment of a pilot drug consumption room, on May 24 a group of activists and volunteers built a pop-up drug consumption room in a tent in the middle of the capital. This act of civil disobedience comes at an especially relevant time, considering that the negotiations around the national Finnish program for the next four years are currently taking place.

In the tent, people who use and inject drugs would have been able to do so in a safe environment, and they would have been offered hygienic equipment and food. Health professionals were also present to provide visitors with advice and support. The purpose of this type of space is that of preventing or limiting the risks of using and injecting drugs in unsafe environments, such as overdose or infection through shared equipment – which is why the implementation of drug consumption rooms is so crucial.

The tent was soon taken down on request of the police, which suggested that the action might have been illegal, as this type of facility is criminalised. However, by the time the police intervened, nobody had had the time to make use of the drug consumption room, meaning that no illegal activity had taken place.

Tuukka Tammi, who is the Programme Director at the THL, the Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare (which supports the plan to open a pilot drug consumption room in Finland), empathises with the motives of the protest. In his statement, he said that while “illegal activity is illegal activity”, “these activists know the reality. Many people die of drug overdoses every year and this kind of facility is one possible solution.”

(This article is based on the report of YLE, the Finnish national news agency.)