You may start finding more and more retailers using blue lightbulbs in their restrooms. It may seem odd, but it's actually pretty brilliant.
The blue light discourages drug users from shooting up or injecting heroin, because it makes it difficult to see their veins.
According to the Associated Press,
"The hardest-core opiate user still wants to be accurate. They want to make sure the needle goes in the right spot," said Read Hayes, a University of Florida researcher and director of the Loss Prevention Research Council, a retail industry-supported group that is looking at the lights' effectiveness.
With our nation in the midst of an opioid epidemic, retailers are desperate to find solutions. In Wilkes-Barre,PA, Coroner William Lisman says people have died from overdoses in the public bathrooms of fast-food restaurants, big-box stores and other retailers. "It can very easily go unnoticed until somebody else wants to use that restroom," he told the AP. "Other patrons realize they can't get in, the manager opens up and we find people deceased."