INSITE - CBC News, August 11, 2006

Safe injection site will continue, with or without Ottawa, supporters vow

CBC News
Supporters of Canada's only safe injection site for intravenous drug addicts vow to try to keep it running if the federal government withdraws its support.

The three-year Health Canada exemption, which allows the facility in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside to operate legally, expires next month.


Mark Townsend of the Portland Hotel Society says the group is 'morally bound' to keep a safe injection site open.
(CBC)
Supporters have been lobbying keep the facility open and say they'll try to maintain a safe injection site if the Conservative government pulls its support.
Mark Townsend of the Portland Hotel Society, which operates the current site with the Vancouver Coastal Health Authority, said there have been more than 1,000 overdoses at the clinic since it opened in September 2003. Staff are trained to deal with overdoses as well as other issues and try to steer users into counselling.

Figures released by the Vancouver Coastal Health Authority for the two-year period ending on March 31, 2006, show:

7,278 unique individuals registered with the clinic, with a daily average of 607 visits.
453 users overdosed, but no one died.
4,083 referrals were made, with 40 per cent of them to addiction counselling.
368 people were referred to withdrawal management.

"I think we, as a community group, would be morally bound to keep it open," Townsend said, "because we would have evidence that if we shut it, people would die."
When the clinic opened in 2003, it was estimated there were nearly 5,000 injection drug users in Vancouver's poorest neighbourhood — with some of the highest HIV and Hepatitis-C infection rates in the world.

Health Canada gave the clinic a three-year operating exemption under Section 56 of the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act. The B.C. government provided $1.2 million to get started and provides operating funding through Vancouver Coastal Health.

New clinic 'no problem' says veteran activist

Dean Wilson, the former president of the Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users, opened the city's first safe injection site more than seven months before the federal government approved the project.

Wilson said he would open a new facility immediately if the legal site is shut down.

"First of all, I know people would volunteer for it, and I know we'd have enough people to operate. We did last time, with no problem. Supplies always managed to get to us and everything else. There are a lot of wealthy individuals out there who support us."

The current site has been endorsed by Vancouver police, the City of Vancouver and the provincial government.

A spokesperson for federal Health Minister Tony Clement says no decision has been made yet on the future of the site.