DOCTORS DEFEND SAFE INJECTION SITE

To the editor:

Re: "VPD: Does Insite feed addiction?" July 2.

We read with concern the suggestion that the Vancouver supervised
injecting facility may feed addiction, since this conclusion flies in
the face of existing evidence.

For instance, research published in the prestigious British Medical
Journal examined for possible harms of the program and demonstrated
that the opening of Insite did not result in abstinent individuals
relapsing into injection drug use. Similarly, research published in
the American Journal of Public Health showed that, rather than
recruiting new injection drug users, Insite users had already been
injecting for an average of 17 years before the facility opened.

Finally, a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine
showed that the opening of Insite was associated with a 30 per cent
increase in use of medical detoxification. In this study, more regular
use of Insite and contact with Insite's addictions counsellor were the
two strongest predictors of subsequent detoxification enrolment among
individuals who had used the injecting facility.

Rather than "feeding addiction" as the Courier's headline suggested, a
wealth of peer-reviewed science indicates that Insite plays a key role
in fighting addiction by increasing the use of addiction treatment and
helping Downtown Eastside drug users become abstinent.

Evan Wood, MD, PhD, and Thomas Kerr, PhD

Vancouver