SAN FRANCISCO - The San Francisco Board of Supervisors has launched a new program to decorate the City’s coin-operated public toilets with psychedelic paraphernalia to provide a more comfortable environment for drug users. The move comes in response to a recent study indicating that many of the toilets are enjoying a high level of popularity among the City’s drug users.

The City began installing the toilets in 1996 as part of a joint venture with French bidet and outdoor furniture titan JC Decaux. Despite some initial opposition, the toilets have become a popular fixture on the San Francisco scene, and have contributed to sharp decline in the City's Noxious Odor Index (NOI) rating.

But JC Decaux's toilets have also proved popular with another segment of San Francisco society: drug users. Drug addicts have discovered that the attractively sculptured hunter-green kiosks make excellent private party pads for intravenous drug shooting, mini Ecstasy raves, killer bong sessions, and crystal meth tweaking.

"Sometimes you just need a little privacy, and these toilets are perfect for that," said Lenny, a 19-year-old runaway tweaker currently living in the Panhandle. "And for 20 minutes for a quarter, the price can't be beat."

But many addicts believe that the harsh lights installed inside the toilets, their stern, unadorned metallic interiors, and a general lack of supportive ambiance has resulted in an epidemic of bad trips. A rash of such episodes erupted last month, with firefighters and paramedics extricating some two-dozen panicked drug users from public toilets.

Fortunately, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors has sprung into action, launching a new toilet beautification campaign designed to ease the jittery nerves of tripsters. The board has formed a new Bureau of Toilet Trippification (BTT) to remodel the 25 toilets currently on the streets. BTT staffers, many of them former and current drug users themselves, are fanning out throughout the city to "trippify" the Decaux toilets.

The trippification makeovers are conducted in a culturally sensitive manner, with each toilet getting a different look depending on its neighborhood. In the Haight, toilets feature tie-dye posters, Grateful Dead tunes, incense burners, and a hot line to the local Cybelle’s Pizza outlet, while the South of Market toilets are oriented toward ravers, with hanging glow sticks, free bottled water, laser light shows, and trance and techno background music.

Still in development is a plan to use the toilets as grow houses for the City’s "medical marijuana" program. The Board of Supervisors has been mulling a plan to grow its own marijuana for "medicinal" use, but has had difficulty finding appropriate locations for marijuana plots. Under the latest proposal, the buds would be grown in special Decaux toilets modified with grow lights and drip irrigation systems.

The proposal would dovetail perfectly with the trippification campaign, according to an aide to one supervisor backing the proposal.

"This would really make these toilets a one-stop shop for drug addicts," said the aide. "There would really be no reason for anyone to ever leave."