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.