Vancouver Safe-Injection Site Gets a Reprieve, Sort-Of

Tony Clement has said that he will not renew the legal exemption for Insite, Vancouver's safe-injection site for another year. But he will not do anything about them until "additional studies" are completed at the end of 2007. Can you say 'delaying 'till after the next election?'

The Conservatives are allowing ideology to run roughshod over good policy. The safe-injection site has helped thousands of addicts and there has not been a single fatality at Insite. The nurses there have helped over 500 people who overdosed, many of whom would ordinarily have died. According to prestigious medical journals the safe-injection site has had the following benefits:

• Increased uptake into detoxification programs and addiction treatment. (New England Journal of Medicine)
• Reduced the number of people injecting in public and the amount of injection-related litter in the downtown eastside. (Canadian Medical Association Journal)
• Insite is attracting the highest-risk users – those more likely to be vulnerable to HIV infection and overdose, and who were contributing to problems of public drug use and unsafe syringe disposal. (American Journal of Preventive Medicine)
• Is not increasing rates of relapse among former drug users, nor is it a negative influence on those seeking to stop drug use. (British Medical Journal)

Over the two years that it was in operation, Insite served 7 278 unique individuals who would otherwise have been shooting up on the street. Insite served an average of 607 visits a day for a total of 443 717 visits over two years. Four hundred and forty three thousand. Is it not worth ensuring that lives are saved? Is it not worth making sure that if needles must be used that they are used in a place of safety, where the needles cannot come into contact with children or other people? Is it not worth ensuring that clean needles are available to stem the spread of HIV/AIDS and other blood-borne diseases?

People addicted to drugs are no less people than you or me. They are equally deserving of life. We must help them overcome their addictions. We must not ostracize them and banish them to dark corners and out of the way places to shoot up with dirty needles. If we say that we will not help them because they are addicted to drugs, then we are saying that they are less than we are. THEY ARE NO LESS. We must do everything in our power to help them. This begins with a safe-injection site and continues by making detoxification and rehabilitation programmes available to those in need. Help continues by having subsidized, affordable, housing available. It continues by realizing that drug addicts are people, just like you and me.

Saying that one group of people is undeserving of society is the then edge of the wedge. We must make sure that the government recognizes this. We have a responsibility to make sure that no one slips through the cracks. No one is undeserving simply by dint of an addiction to a substance, be that substance coffee, nicotine, alcohol or illegal drugs. No one.

All of the information in this post is sourced from Vancouver Coastal Health and can be found here. Vancouver Coastal Health is a publically funded public health organization serving Vancouver and surrounding areas.

Days Remaining in Bush Presidency: 881