Pubdate: Wed, 13 Apr 2016
Source: StarPhoenix, The (CN SN)
Copyright: 2016 The StarPhoenix
Contact:  http://thestarphoenix.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/400
Author: Jonathan Charlton
Page: A1

TIME FOR A SAFE INJECTION SITE?

Saskatoon Tribal Council wants to study establishing a location in
city

The chief of the Saskatoon Tribal Council wants to investigate the
merits of a safe injection site in the city.

"We haven't determined whether or not there should be one here yet. My
standpoint is we need to look at the facts and the data and make an
informed decision," Felix Thomas said.

The new Liberal federal government appears more friendly to the
concept than its Conservative predecessor - last month, Health Canada
granted a four-year exemption from federal drug laws for Vancouver's
Insite.

The only two safe injection sites in Canada are both in Vancouver.
Similar facilities have been proposed in Ottawa and Toronto.

The STC already operates a busy 20th Street clinic that provides
needle exchange, counselling, testing and addiction services. The
clinic hands out more than a million needles per year; in March alone,
it took in 97,974 and gave out 97,368, Thomas said.

"We've expended a lot of our own-source revenue on it. At some point
we've got to say, 'We can't afford to do this anymore.' So we're going
to have to work with the health region and the province as to how can
we sustain this."

The Saskatoon Fire Department responded to 1,392 calls to pick up
discarded needles last year and collected 8,581 of them, according to
assistant chief Dave Bykowy.

Thomas said while no formal plans are in motion, it would be a
disservice not to at least study the idea of a safe injection site. "I
think it's one of those things, we would go to the health ministry as
well as the health region and say, 'Do we want to look at this?' "

The question is whether the Insite model, developed to serve
Vancouver's concentrated community of IV drug users, would fit in
Saskatoon, said Peter Butt, an associate professor in the department
of family medicine at the University of Saskatchewan and an addictions
consultant with the Saskatoon Health Region.

"There's good data, but you have to adopt and adapt to the community,"
Butt said.

"I think we should take full advantage of any service that's going to
help us, but we also need to be smart in how we use the resources that
are available to us. Is it better to have a safe injection site, or is
it better to ramp up the availability of clean needles throughout the
community though another street outreach van?"

Harm reduction strategies such as safe injection sites should be
clearly positioned as outreach and engagement so users can access
other health and addictions services, he said.

"If people don't understand that - if the public thinks this is just
about enabling injection - then that's problematic and tends to have a
backlash and tends to feed into stigma and may not be seen as a
constructive use of health-care dollars."

Ryan Meili, a Saskatoon family physician, said a safe injection site
could "potentially" be useful and he supports a feasibility study being 
done.

"What we see from the Insite experience in Vancouver is that it
reduces the incidence of overdose and of transmission of HIV and
Hepatitis C. Considering the troubles we have with IVdrug use here in
Saskatoon and a number of places in the province, reducing those
things would be really positive," he said.

However, every city and every drug culture is different; the Saskatoon
drug culture can be more spread out than in Vancouver, he noted.

One "obvious and easy" improvement would be a move to needle
distribution rather than just an exchange, because it works better to
curb transmissions and infections, and leads to greater decrease in
drug use, Meili said.

"It's encouraging we have a federal government now that's more
interested in the evidence than ideology on this, and that harm
reduction is becoming a norm, and I think we need to hear more of that
language at a provincial level."

- - With files from The Canadian Press
- ---
MAP posted-by: Matt