Safe Injection Sites

In an ally, doorway, or behind a telephone pole, people crouch to inject their deadly dose of cocaine, heroin, and other drugs, oblivious to the daytime traffic on a nearby street. This is the day to day life of the drug users in downtown Vancouver; do you think there is nothing that can be done? Well, there is. Safe injections sites are a clean, safe, supervised environment where drug users can inject their own drugs off the streets, and connect to addiction, health and community services. InSite is the first and only supervised injection site in North America (InSite for Community Safety). InSite is located at 139 East Hastings Street, in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver. More safe injection sites will greatly reduce overdose fatalities, notably reduce public injections, improving public order, and reduce the transmission of blood-borne infections. The number of safe injection sites in the Lower Mainland must increase immediately. A rise in the number of safe injection sites in the Lower Mainland will greatly reduce overdose fatalities. In the seven years that InSite has been open, no overdoses in the facility have been fatal. Of the approximately 11,207 users, “there have been a large number of overdoses within the Safe Injection Facility, and it is noteworthy that none of these overdoses resulted in a fatality” (Kerr et al.). The average amount of overdose deaths has dramatically dropped from approximately 200/year in the years before InSite to approximately 35/year over the last five years. This means that with InSite being open less people have died from overdoses and more people are getting help when they do overdose. This in turn makes it safer for people who feel they need drugs to survive. Drug users who use safe injection sites for seventy-five percent or more of their injections are less likely to overdose. This is because of increased safety measures and drug use education at InSite. Having more Safe Injection Sites in the Lower Mainland would mean

Cited: Kerr, Thomas , Mark W. Tyndall, Calvin Lai, Julio S.G. Montaner, and Evan Wood. "Drug-related overdoses within a medically supervised safer injection facility." International Journal of Drug Policy. N.p., n.d. Web. 3 Apr. 2010. <http://www.communityInSite.ca/odpaper.pdf>. Kerr, Thomas , Mark Tyndall, Kathy Li, Julio Montaner, and Evan Wood. "Safer injection facility use and syringe sharing in injection." Reseach Letters. N.p., n.d. Web. 8 Apr. 2010. <http://www.communityInSite.ca/pdf/syringe-sharing.pdf>. Vancouver 's INSITE Service and Other Supervised Injection Sites: What Has Been Learned from Research? - Final Report of the Expert Advisory Committee on Supervised Injection Site Research." Health Canada Web site. N.p., 4 Apr. 2008. Web. 8 Apr. 2010. <http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/ahc-asc/pubs/_sites-lieux/InSite/index-eng.php#InSite>. Wood, Evan, Thomas Kerr, Will Small, Kathy Li, David C. Marsh, Julio S. G. Montaner, and Mark W. Tyndall. "Changes in public order after the opening of a medically supervised safer injecting facility for illicit injection drug users." Research. N.p., n.d. Web. 8 Apr. 2010. <http://www.communityInSite.ca/pdf/changes-in-public-order.pdf>. Wood, Evan, Mark W. Tyndall, Jo-Anne Stoltz, Will Small, Elisa Lloyd-Smith, Ruth Zhang, Julio S.G. Montaner, and Thomas Kerr. "Factors Associated with Syringe Sharing." American Journal of Infectious Diseases 1. N.p., n.d. Web. 8 Apr. 2010. ttp://www.communityinsite.ca/pdf/syringe-sharing-factors.pdf>.