Pubdate: Tue, 12 Apr 2016
Source: Metro (Ottawa, CN ON)
Page: 9
Copyright: 2016 Metro
Contact:  http://www.metronews.ca/Ottawa
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/4032
Author: Steve Collins

INJECTION SITES OVERDUE BY YET ANOTHER YEAR

Our urban affairs columnist is growing frustrated over the delays for 
supervised injection sites.

When the topic of supervised injection sites comes up, I prepare to 
get frustrated.

So last week, as the Sandy Hill Community Centre held the first of a 
series of public consultations on a proposed site, I braced for the 
usual Groundhog Day dance of official mulishness, denial of evidence, 
and delay, delay, delay.

Our mayor and police chief didn't disappoint. They're still both 
against supervised facilities for people to inject drugs, despite the 
overwhelming evidence that they cut the risk of overdose, HIV and 
Hep-C. It'll encourage crime, says the chief. Health care dollars are 
scarce, says the mayor.

Two years ago, a Simon Fraser University analysis calculated that it 
would cost $4.4 million to run two sites here, but save us $5 million 
in prevented infections alone. The mayor and police chief were 
opposed then, too.

Like cough syrup, supervised injection sites taste terrible. And they 
work. Vancouver's pioneering Insite facility has been poked, prodded 
and studied nearly to death. Not a single overdose death at the 
facility. Drastic reductions in death and disease. Study after 
peer-reviewed study.

Whenever a politician tells you, as they still will sometimes, that 
expert opinion is split on the matter, laugh if you can, cry if you 
must. There is no split. Dr. Mark Tyndall, when he headed the Ottawa 
Hospital's infectious disease unit, compared that argument to 
claiming the world is flat. In short, it's bull.

Dr. Isra Levy, the city's chief medical officer of health, is 
unequivocal that the facilities save lives, and the question is not 
whether the city needs one, but whether it needs more than one. But 
Ottawa Public Health has no plans to open one, because, well, you know.

The stigma against drug users, the natural resistance to making it 
easier and safer for them to do something inherently illegal and 
dangerous, is a powerful force, one that makes our political 
leadership resistant if not immune to the evidence.

It's been a year since I last wrote on this topic. The Conservative 
government, having failed in their latest attempt to shut down 
Insite, had just passed Bill C-2, the Respect For Communities Act, 
which threw up multiple roadblocks to repeating its success elsewhere.

It requires criminal background checks for all employees, for 
example, which disqualifies a lot of former users who want to help 
others become former users. It's the only sort of health facility 
that requires a letter from the local police chief before it can open.

A year later, a lot has changed, and a lot hasn't. We have a new 
government no longer ideologically opposed to supervised injection 
sites, and in Toronto, public health officials plan to open three facilities.

In Ottawa, we haven't budged. Meanwhile, over the course of that 
year, 40 people, give or take, have died of overdoses. We rack up 
another fatal OD every 10 days or so.

Last year, I spoke to Catherine Hacksel of the Coalition for Safer 
Consumption Sites. What she said still hurts.

"The longer it takes to get a site open, the more days pass and the 
more people die," she told me. "To me it's very personal because 
these are my friends." 
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MAP posted-by: Jo-D