Opened in Barcelona in 1993, it is located in one of the main drug use and dealing areas in Barcelona. Until the end of December 2008 the center received 58,978 visits and since the beginning 11,381 different people have been registered. In 2008, 811 people were attended to for the first time and on average 154 different people visit the service per day. During 2008 the index of syringes recovered was 0.35, with 90,488 syringes delivered and 32,104 recovered. The human resources are 1 coordinator, 4 nurses, 6 social educators, 1 medical internist, 1 lawyer and 1 psychologist. Condoms, new needles and smoking equipment are also offered for free. In 2003, a drug consumption room for injected use, supervised by healthcare professionals, was added to the initial needle exchange program. This drug consumption room allows the professionals to directly observe the injected heroin and cocaine consumption and their acute effects and act in emergency situations. Like many harm-reduction programs in the southern Europe, SAPS was primarily focused on injected drug use. The change in the method of consumption from injecting to smoking is recommended to reduce the blood-borne infectious diseases such HIV, Hepatitis B and C, and other diseases directly related to injection, such as abscess, phlebitis or thrombosis. It is also possible to reduce mortality related to acute reactions to intravenous consumption.
However, merely suggesting is not sufficient to promote this change of method of consumption from injecting to smoking. We must have an in-depth knowledge of the specific characteristics of smoked use and that the harm-reduction centres can provide the chance to smoke instead of injecting. In many cities crack smokers have been largely ignored in the development and implementation of harm-reduction programmes. The main objectives of this study are to describe the smoked cocaine user's profile in socially-depressed areas and their needs from a harm-reduction perspective, to investigate their use of smoking crack and consumption patterns and compare the acute effects between injecting and smoking consumption. On the one hand, two focus group sessions of two hours each were undertaken with a total of 8 drug users. Participants were recruited in January 2008, firstly from those who attended our centre, according to the following criteria: they have smoked cocaine and have minimum language skills in speaking, reading and writing. The sessions were managed by three staff members (two nurses and one social worker) following a semi-structured script.
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