INJECTION SITES PUSHED BY HEALTH GROUP

The Health Officers Council of B.C. is calling on the Ministry of
Health and regional health authorities to make safe injection sites
for intravenous drug users available across the province.

Members of the council met in Prince Rupert in October to discuss the
issue, and passed a resolution supporting safe injection sites as part
of regular addictions services.

The resolution said Vancouver's Insite supervised injection site has
been throughly studied and found to provide valuable care with, "no
adverse consequences."

"One of the things we considered is the evidence supporting the safe
injection site in Vancouver. It definitely shows positive benefits to
the neighbourhood," Northern Health chief medical health officer Dr.
David Bowering said. "It was really to lend our endorsement to harm
reduction in the form of safe injection sites."

Peer-reviewed studies have appeared in medical journals including The
Lancet and Journal of the American Medical Association supporting the
site's benefits to drug users and community members, Bowering said.
Addicts using Insite are less likely to die of overdoses or be
infected with blood-borne diseases, like HIV/AIDS, and more likely to
seek treatment.

Bowering said communities like Prince George should be discussing if a
safe injection site could benefit the city. Prince George has a
concentrated area of drug use in the downtown core and rising levels
of HIV/AIDS and Hepatitis C.

"(But) there would be an awful lot of work to do before we get to that
point. Northern Health has no appetite for imposing something like
that until all the discussion has taken place," he said. "Arguably we
don't have the resources, if we did want to go ahead with one."

A number of agencies in the community are already working on the
issue, he said, and getting neighbourhood stakeholders and the public
onboard would have to be part of the process.

Bowering said he supports safe injection sites, because they reduce
the harm drug addicts cause themselves rather than just treating it
after the fact.

"Harm reduction is a reasonable thing to do, given a bad situation,"
he said. "In 2005, the council... advocated taking a public-health
approach to the regulation of psychoactive drugs. Do we have to stick
with a model that obviously doesn't work?"

By making psychoactive drugs - narcotics like marijuana, heroin and
cocaine - illegal, it creates a market for criminals to produce and
sell them, he said.

That leads to poor quality control, unsafe drug practices and the
criminalization of addicts.

Prince George city councillor Brian Skakun said he is concerned about
how much input the city, and neighbourhood residents and business
owners, would have if Northern Health did decide to develop a safe
injection site.

"I'm all for harm reduction... but my concern is if Northern Health
decides to develop this, and just put it someplace with the correct
zoning, would the city have any say?" Skakun said. "I'd really hope
that Northern Health, before deciding to do something like this, would
talk with the city and the public."