Amsterdam’s New Mobile Drug Consumption Room to Begin Operations Soon – Interview with Anika Apfel

In mid-April 2025, a new mobile drug consumption room (DCR) service will start operating in Amsterdam to address some challenges brought by outdoor drug use in one of the city’s parks. We asked Anika Apfel, site manager at de Regenboog Groep’s AMOC drop-in center and drug consumption room, about the development of the new service. 

What prompted the creation of the mobile DCR? Why was it needed?

The municipality was looking for solutions to have fewer people using drugs in Oosterpark. There were needles found in the park, and there are people dealing drugs there. The neighborhood wanted solutions to feel safer in the park, and they wanted to have less nuisance by people who use drugs. So they asked the municipality for help, and the municipality sent more police and more Handhaving (municipal enforcement officials).

But they noticed that the drug scene moved over the city, and they realised that if they continued doing that, the drug scene would just move again. So, they also wanted to have different kinds of approaches—offer harm reduction solutions to the target group instead of always chasing them away,  seeing who is there, why are they going there, what do they need. That was the main reason.

We had a meeting with them with my colleague Cedric Charvet, who also gave them the harm reduction training. They asked us a lot of questions about harm reduction programs that could work. I think that’s how the idea grew and got support.

Can you describe the process of developing the mobile DCR? What were the biggest challenges during its preparation?

It’s a completely new project, and several people need to do the driver’s license for it. You also need people to work there and get trained on Harm Reduction approaches. We don’t have a mobile unit yet, so there’s going to be a lot of trial and error..

What is the reaction of the neighbourhood to the initiative?

There were meetings with the neighborhood—some of the neighbors were very worried about the drug use in the park and wanted solutions. Others were very upset about the nuisance or felt unsafe going into the park at night. There were neighbors who were like, yeah, this is nothing in comparison to the eighties in Oosterpark. Very different reactions.

Luckily, when they suggested this harm reduction mobile unit, people reacted quite positively. Or, there was not so much reaction to it, which I consider positive.

Is this a temporary intervention or one that you plan to keep in the long term?

For the long term. Hopefully, we can keep on using the mobile unit even if maybe at some point it’s not needed anymore in Oosterpark. We could also go to other places. 

How is this mobile DCR going to complement the already existing drug consumption rooms in Amsterdam?

We hope we will get clients who we normally don’t see inside drug comsumption rooms. People who only use outside, on the streets, or maybe people who have a house but cannot use inside their own house. People for whom the threshold to come here (AMOC DCR) or to come to other drug consumption rooms is maybe too high. That’s one of the perspectives.

In the drug consumption rooms that are more for Dutch people or non-EU citizens, the number of clients who go there has decreased.  At the same time, for what it seems, the outside drug scene has grown. So it’ll also be interesting to see why they don’t go inside, why they don’t make use of drug consumption rooms.

They may not be unhoused, but they might need other kinds of services that they don’t get at this moment.  I hope we can show them that they can come to us, social workers who don’t stigmatise them, who welcome them, and who offer support if they need it. That they don’t feel ashamed about using drugs and also get other support and a healthier way of living, maybe healthy food or fresh clothes.

With this user room, it’s also really important for us to fight loneliness, to create a welcoming atmosphere. Stress is always unhealthy, and for people using drugs on the street, it is much higher because they constantly have to run away from the police and from Handhaving, and they constantly have to score drugs, make sure that they don’t get withdrawal symptoms. The loneliness of using and the shame that you can feel or the guilt that other people impose on you are very harmful. Harm reduction is to combat all these things.

How do you ensure the safety and well-being of people using the service? 

It’s mostly about the three basic principles of our user room (AMOC): safety, hygiene, and stress-free. They’re all meant to improve the well-being and health of people. 

We can guarantee hygiene by giving people clean materials for using drugs, and lower their stress by giving healthy food and a space where they can use in peace without being chased away and without fear of stigma. 

As you see, there’s also a community that’s being created around it. It’s really important for people to have this network because if you live on the streets or if you are outside on the streets and cannot feel safe at home,  you need people around you. You need some love in your life, so it’s really important for them to also create a community.

Are there any lessons learned or best practices from the implementation of the mobile DCR that could benefit other harm reduction initiatives?

I think especially these three principles, stress-free, safety and hygiene are super useful because you don’t have rules like “don’t do this, don’t do that”. 

From those basic principles, you can extract all the rules. Say, for instance,  don’t cut your nails on the table because it’s unhygienic or don’t come in with a huge knife because it feels unsafe for people, or don’t come with a blasting speaker because it brings stress to people. You can defer all those rules from those three basic principles, and I think this makes it more welcoming and also gives people the feeling that they can have a say in what we do and what we don’t do inside of a user room. They can say, I feel unsafe if you do this and that, so I don’t want you to do it.

You often see user rooms that are very clinical. It doesn’t look clinical here, but it’s still super hygienic. I think that’s one of the best practices that we have, to make it more like a living room, to really build this community atmosphere. They also use and inject drugs in the park, which is also not a clinical surrounding. So we need to create a space that is according to their needs and not only according to what we think is hygienic or what we think it should look like.

Is there anything else that you would find relevant to mention?

I just hope that more governments will also choose harm reduction instead of criminalisation because the war on drugs is not helping people. It’s killing people. It’s destroying communities. Harm reduction saves lives. Instead of wasting resources on the war on drugs, if you invested better in harm reduction, you also lower criminality among people who use drugs. That’s also scientifically proven.  So I really hope that more user rooms and more harm reduction programs can open all over the world and that drugs will be more decriminalised, and more drugs will be decriminalised in more countries.