Pubdate: Wed, 24 Jul 2013
Source: Calgary Herald (CN AB)
Copyright: 2013 Canwest Publishing Inc.
Contact: 
http://www.calgaryherald.com/opinion/letters/letters-to-the-editor.html
Website: http://www.calgaryherald.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/66
Author: Liz Evans
Note: Liz Evans is the Founder and Executive Director of PHS 
Community Services Society. For more information about Insite and to 
read the various evaluations, you can visit, www.communityinsite.ca
Referenced: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v13/n349/a03.html

INSITE SAVES ADDICTS' LIVES, OFTEN TRANSFORMS THEM

In Rebuttal

Re: "Vancouver's easy drug access may have helped kill Monteith," 
Licia Corbella, Opinion, July 19.

I am the executive director of the PHS Community Services Society 
that runs (in partnership with the Vancouver Coastal Health 
Authority) Vancouver's "Insite," the supervised injection site 
mentioned in Licia Corbella's piece last week.

It is heartbreakingly sad that someone as young as Cory Monteith 
should die from drug use. My heart goes out to the friends, family 
and parents who struggle with the unimaginable pain of seeing loved 
ones and children die prematurely. As a parent, I find it impossible 
to comprehend the depth of their sadness, and yet I have seen it far 
too many times in my work.

Trained as a nurse, when I started working in the Downtown Eastside, 
just like Corbella, I too had some extremely uninformed views - 
despite meaning well. I believed there were simple solutions for the 
obvious suffering. In this community I found people struggling in 
their addiction and mental health issues, some dying from drug 
overdoses, and others with complex stories and lives where solutions 
were not obvious or simple. Once when checking on an elderly female 
resident, I found her in her room where she sat in a rocking chair 
with the needle still in her arm, dead. The consequences of addiction 
in our modern "civilized" society should not be death. We need to get 
out from under the blaming and fear and start to care about people 
with some wisdom and clarity.

We need to stop thinking about the drug user as the "other." People 
use drugs across every sector of society: in Calgary for certain, in 
Montreal, in Toronto, in private schools, in public schools, in 
hospitals, in jails, and, yes, in Vancouver. People all across 
society have managed to find and use illicit drugs for centuries.

Implicit in drug use is shame, isolation, stigma, the risk of 
disease, and death, regardless of the size of your paycheque. Canada 
can do better.

It is heartbreaking that a columnist would reinforce these 
well-meaning but misinformed views, feeding into a popular story 
responsible for so much suffering, disease and death across our country.

Insite was created for the specific purpose of preventing people from 
dying - and it does.

Insite does not provide drugs. It does provide clean needles that 
stop the spread of disease and a medically trained staff that can 
intervene in overdose.

To be very clear: had Cory Monteith chosen to inject at Insite on the 
day he died, he would not be dead. Over one million injections have 
taken place at Insite since it opened without a death.

When Corbella states that more examination of Insite is necessary, 
she misses some pretty gargantuan points. Firstly, the evaluation has 
been done.

According to research published in the British Medical Journal, 
Insite has not prompted adverse changes in community drug use 
patterns. According to research published by Health Canada, the 
neighbourhood residents and businesses view Insite as making a 
positive contribution and reduces public disorder. According to 
research published in the American Journal of Public Health, Insite 
does not promote drug use and the average Insite user has been 
injecting for 16 years.

The health benefits of Insite were a key issue fought and won during 
a Vancouver election and the subject of a Supreme Court of Canada 
case, where it received the unanimous support of nine Supreme Court 
justices. The actual science and facts are in fact easy to find, 
given that Insite is one of the most studied health care programs of 
its size, in Canada. The Harper government poured millions into 
researching Insite, looking for negative outcomes, without success. 
So rather than repeating a couple of anecdotes off the street, or 
eaves-dropping from a conversation, perhaps reading these studies 
would shed some light in earnest.

In the last 22 years that I have been involved with our low-income 
community, our organization has worked with thousands and thousands 
of people offering detox, treatment, housing, supports and a safe 
place in which to inject. There has been a 35 per cent decrease in 
drug overdose deaths in the four blocks around Insite. Of the 13,000 
individuals who have made use of Insite, thousands have connected to 
health care, detox, drug treatment, and housing.

When people coming to Insite are ready to try to get clean, they can 
go upstairs to "Onsite" where we have a detox and transitional 
recovery housing. The evaluation shows that people who use Insite are 
over 30 per cent more likely to access detox and treatment than those 
who do not.

All of this experience and research illustrates that addiction is 
complicated, with no "silver bullets." Insite allows people the time 
to stay alive, with the possibility of improving their situation. If 
you are dead, you have no hope of recovery.

There are many complicated reasons people end up addicted and I, as 
much as anyone, wish I knew how to "save people" and end the tragic 
circumstances people who use drugs find themselves in.

Cory Monteith's death shocked and saddened us because he seemed to 
have it all. I am not so naive to think there are not many, many 
people like him across our country who would benefit from a kinder, 
more thoughtful attitude toward addiction.

Restricting our analysis to a belief that drug use is limited to the 
social outcasts we love to blame for all manner of social ills 
damages us all. Vancouver has embraced an alternative view, one that 
says the drug users' lives actually matter.

We need more policies to support an approach that wraps services 
around people, not beliefs.

While I understand Licia Corbella sincerely wants to help, perhaps 
her words would be more effectively directed toward the Harper 
government's cuts to services that could help offer long-term 
treatment, and detox, rather than demonizing the minuscule amount of 
funding spent on reducing it's harm. This suffering has to end and it 
is up to all of us to get informed and make it happen.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom