Canada - Vancouver’s drug injection clinic Insite to stay open another year

[S.J.B.]

Vancouver’s drug injection clinic Insite to stay open another year
Sam Smith
Metro
March 28th, 2014

Vancouver’s supervised injection site received another year-long exemption from the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act by Health Canada on Friday, March 28, allowing the facility to continue to operate in the Downtown Eastside.

Anna Marie D’Angelo, spokesperson for Vancouver Coastal Health, was happy to hear of the announcement.

“It’s an annual exemption and we do get it every year, but we’re very pleased to see it come again,” D’Angelo said.

Insite opened in Sept. 2003 to provide a “safe, health-focused place where people can inject drugs and connect to health care services – from primary care to treat disease and infection, to addiction counselling and treatment, to housing and community supports,” according to VCH.

Read the full story here.

 

[ro4eva]

Oh thank God. When I first read the title of the thread, I was thinking that InSite was going to close its doors in a year's time.

You scared me man.

We seriously need to get one or two opened up in Toronto and Montreal. Perhaps if Olivia Chow wins Toronto's next mayoral election this year, maybe, just maybe we may have a chance of seeing it happen. Definitely not if Rob Ford wins again though (highly doubt he will). That two-faced fat fuck is so full of it - I can't wait to see the look on his face when he realizes he's lost the election. Even better, I can't wait to see his reaction when Toronto Police find evidence of his involvement in the deaths of Anthony Smith and the other deceased gangbanger.

 

[poledriver]

Yeah, great news. I've never injected drugs personally, but am very much for these drug injection centres.

It is also North America’s first legal supervised injection site, operating as a harm-reduction service which aims to decrease adverse health, social and economic consequences of drug use without requiring the abstinence of drugs.

Research conducted by the BC Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS has shown a 35 per cent reduction in overdose deaths within 500 metres of Insite, and the facility boasted zero deaths in all of its 2-million client visits in Sept. 2013.

The Conservative government has long been opposed to Insite, and believes the focus should instead be on drug-use prevention.

Insite is legally exempted from the act for scientific and research purposes, according to Vancouver Coastal Health.

How anyone can argue against the good they do is beyond me, believing the focus should be on drug use prevention is just head in the sand kind of thinking to me. People are going to do it if they wont to either way, so why not make it as safe as possible for them.

The Sydney (kings Cross) legal supervised drug injection centre has been going for along time as well with zero OD deaths also I believe, I can't imagine how many lives it has saved. It pisses me off when people want to close places like these down just because they are against drug use, they are so closed minded and selfish. For all the good work that it has done (the one in Sydney) I don't think any other states in Aus have followed and done their own ones sadly (although I am not 100% on that). They should have one in every major capitol city and even in some well populated rural areas too imo.