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The colorful bulbs throw a strange blue glow in the toilets of a convenience store where people who inject heroin and other drugs seek to protect themselves from relative privacy stalls.
The blue lights are meant to discourage people from using drugs in the bathrooms of the shops by making it harder for them to see their veins. It's an idea that has been around for years but takes a new look as a result of the nation's opioid epidemic.
"The hardest opiate user always wants to be specific: he wants to make sure that the needle goes to the right place," says Read Hayes, a researcher at the University. from Florida and director of the Loss Prevention Research Council group who looks at the effectiveness of lights. The goal of blue light is to "disrupt this process" and force people to go elsewhere to take drugs, he said.
Turkey Hill Minit Markets, a 260-store chain based in Lancaster, is one of two convenience store chains and a supermarket chain working with the Loss Prevention Group to field test blue light bulbs. Hayes, whose group designs methods to fight theft and violent crime in the stores, said the study is still in its infancy, but that the first returns from the stores that used them have been positive.
Previous studies have questioned the deterrent effect of lights, people who use opioids telling researchers that they would shoot in blue light if it meant avoiding withdrawal symptoms. Many public health experts oppose the practice, saying that blue lights make people more likely to hurt themselves and stigmatize those who are struggling with addiction.
And, for people accustomed to injecting, there are ways to get around the lights.
Brett Wolfson-Stofko of the National Institute of Development and Research, who studied injecting drug use in public baths, said: "Someone in withdrawal who gets the Heroine will want to use as soon as possible, even if the place is not optimal.
Store owners say they have to do something.
In Luzerne County, where Turkey Hill installed blue lights in a Wilkes-Barre store, coroner William Lisman said people died of overdoses in public bathrooms of fast-food outlets, supermarkets and from other retailers.
"It can very easily go unnoticed until someone else uses that toilet," he said. "Other clients realize that they can not come in, the manager opens and we find dead people."
In some areas of Turkey Hill in the most-affected neighborhoods, store employees often found used syringes or even overdose people, said Matt Dorgan, head of asset protection for the community. chain.
"We realized that we must do something to protect our associates and our customers," he said.
The blue lights were part of a broader set of security measures at Turkey Hill that included brighter outdoor lighting, new windows to make the shop exteriors more visible from the inside and training on the security for store employees.
More than six months after the channel started using blue lights in 20 stores, "we can not find anything," Dorgan said. "It's a pretty dramatic reduction, we have not had a single overdose."
Last fall, Sheetz, a convenience store chain with more than 500 stores in six states, installed a new lighting system in the restrooms of its New Kensington store, about 20 miles from Pittsburgh. Blue lights are "designed to help our customers and employees avoid dangerous situations," said company spokesman Nick Ruffner.
Sheetz, he said, has seen "positive steps in the right direction," and has since installed blue light bulbs in a Huntington, West Virginia, store.
Some health experts encourage interventions that do not involve blue lights.
The installation of needle disposal containers can help protect store employees, the public and drug users, while the outward – facing stall doors can make it easier to get rid of the needles. access to a person with an overdose who is in need of medical assistance.
Stores can also work with law enforcement, social service agencies, and addiction services to address the problem – a step that Hayes, in the Loss Prevention Council, has stated that retailers plan to take.
Retailers are not the only ones to experience blue lights.
The City of Philadelphia has begun distributing kits to residents that include a blue light bulb for the porch, signs banning intrusion, a tool to pick up used syringes, a needle box and contact information for social services.
The city – where overdose deaths, powered by powerful synthetic opioid fentanyl, jumped more than 30 percent to 1,200 last year – has distributed more than 100 kits since January.
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