Pubdate: Mon, 12 May 2008 Source: National Post (Canada) Copyright: 2008 Southam Inc. Contact: http://www.nationalpost.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/286 Author: Liz Evans Note: Liz Evans is the executive director of the PHS Community Services Society which operates Vancouver's supervised injection site. Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/topic/insite (InSite) Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/hr.htm (Harm Reduction) INSITE AND HARM REDUCTION WORK In the National Post May 7 article about Vancouver's supervised injection site (" 'Social revolution' nears its expiry date") Canada's Minister of Health, Tony Clement, says that the best way to get addicts off drugs is to provide the supports for that addict, rather than do the work InSite does. I disagree. Dead addicts can't benefit from the government's enforcement, treatment and prevention strategy. Harm reduction -- keeping people well until they feel they are ready for treatment -- needs to be part of the government's drug strategy. Last week, I was part of a group of people that planted more than 800 crosses in a Downtown Eastside neighbourhood park. This wouldn't be newsworthy if each cross represented someone who died, because people dying in the Downtown Eastside is tragically commonplace. The twist is that each cross represented someone who lived, despite overdosing from drugs. Had InSite not opened four-and-a-half years ago, many of these crosses could have been on real graves and represented somebody's brother, somebody's daughter or somebody's friend. There is scientific evidence, reams of it, that supports the validity of InSite's work. The annual operating budget comes exclusively from the B. C. provincial government, and even Stephen Harper's own politically appointed committee, hired to review the existing research and review the evidence on InSite, determined that our safe injection site decreased public injections, has not increased crime, decreased needle sharing, increased access to detox and treatment, successfully intervened in overdose deaths, does not increase drug relapse rates and saves lives. Of the more than one million injections that have taken place at InSite since it opened, under the supervision of a nurse, out of the alleys and off the doorways of local businesses, close to 1,000 resulted in overdoses -- without a single person dying. Because injections are supervised, because nurses and health care professionals are on hand, because InSite provides a clean and safe environment, no one died. For more than a decade, Vancouver's Downtown Eastside community has watched people challenged by addiction fall by the wayside, become infected with HIV or hepatitis C or overdosed and died. Not just a few, but many. In fact, so many that our local health authority declared a public health emergency in the Downtown Eastside 10 years ago. InSite was, in part, a response to the public health emergency -- a sanctuary away from the disease, the death, the alleys and the brutality. A place where addicts could be treated with respect, where they could receive clean equipment and make contact with a system of assistance. More than 24 published scientific research papers have shown the success of the facility. Yet for some reason that seems more to do with politics than science, Tony Clement still refuses to accept what everyone else acknowledges --InSite saves lives. And he is clearly in the minority, because B. C. Premier Gordon Campbell accepts and supports InSite, as does our Minister of Health George Abbott, our Mayor Sam Sullivan, our Chief of Police Jimmy Chu, our universities, our academics, our medical professionals, our nurses' associations and unions, 76% of Vancouverites, all of our elected municipal officials, all of our mayoral candidates and our drug-user community. Addiction is a complex issue and there is no magic bullet or single intervention to address it. InSite is just one intervention that happens to be working. I would welcome other effective approaches Mr. Clement has to offer, but there is no justification for not doing everything he can to keep InSite operating -- because we know it works. Liz Evans is the executive director of the PHS Community Services Society which operates Vancouver's supervised injection site. - --- MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom