time ago I read an article that spoke of certain places where, for example, heroin addicts, could take drugs, assisted by medical personnel after used syringes were delivered to doctors so that if there was the overdose the drug addict was saved , and not were left around used syringes, which could contain various diseases including HIV...
As far as Italy is concern they did what you're saying in Turin (Italy's Heroin Capital in the '80s and '90s), but the doctors weren't just giving them drugs...they were slowly bringing them to use safer and non-lethal whatever - whatever to make them off and eventually most of those addicts recovered. It took a while but a promising percentage did.
