SAFE INJECTION SITE PLAN IS SCIENTIFICALLY SOUND: HEALTH OFFICIAL

Despite Ottawa's Opposition, Strategy Reduces Ods, Infections, Doctors Agree

Are they legalized shooting galleries or harm-reduction centres?

A report released Friday by the Montreal public health department
recommends that three supervised injection sites and a mobile one be
established next year in city neighbourhoods where intravenous drug
use is rampant.

Dr. Richard Lessard, director of public health, suggested that fixed
sites be set up in Hochelaga-Maisonneuve, downtown and an area near
St. Urbain and Prince Arthur Sts. The mobile unit would move around
St. Henri and the city's southwest sector.

"We are convinced - and all the scientific studies back us up on this
point - that supervised injection sites do not create new problems,"
Lessard told The Gazette. "On the contrary, they reduce the problem of
syringes found on the streets and in the parks, and they reduce the
number of overdose deaths."

The federal Conservative government has taken a "tough on crime"
position against supervised injection sites. Federal cabinet minister
Tony Clement, when he oversaw the health portfolio, lectured doctors
at their annual convention in 2008 on the evils of safe injection
sites, saying they violate the medical code of ethics.

Most physicians, however, support safe injection sites as places where
addicts can take heroin and other drugs without running the risk of
contracting HIV and the hepatitis C virus, and potentially spreading
the viruses to others. Drug users are often referred by nurses and
doctors for psychological counselling and medical appointments that
would be inaccessible to them on the streets. Some drug users have
found affordable housing through such sites, and many are vaccinated
against hepatitis C.

Safe injection sites steer almost one in three IV addicts toward drug
rehab programs.

"Safe injection sites work very well," said Dr. Pierre Cote, director
of the HIV/ drug-addition unit at the Center hospitalier de
l'universite de Montreal.

"They are known to reduce the number of hospitalizations that arise
from drug users using dirty needles and they reduce the number of
deaths by overdose."

A study published in The Lancet medical journal in April observed that
illicit drug overdose deaths in Vancouver's downtown eastside
plummeted by 35 per cent after the establishment of InSite, North
America's first supervised injection facility.

The Harper government had tried to indirectly close InSite by letting
its exemption from federal drug laws lapse. But in September, the
Supreme Court ordered the federal minister of health to grant an
immediate exemption to allow InSite to continue running. In Montreal,
North America's first safeneedle exchange opened in 1989. Cactus
Montreal is still around, but it only provides clean needles. At a
supervised injection site, to be located in either a health
establishment or a community centre, a health professional will ask
the addict a series of questions and supervise the drugtaking, Lessard
explained.

The voluminous study by the public health department noted that IV
drug-use deaths have jumped from an average of 50 a year in Montreal
in the first half of the last decade to 72 in 2009, the last year for
which complete figures are available. The NIMBY syndrome - Not In My
Back Yard - is always an issue with safe injection sites. Lessard said
he sympathizes with community groups and has met with concerned citizens.

"What we've explained to these groups is that studies have shown that
in cities where there are such sites, there has been no increase in
the activity," he said. "In proposing three fixed sites and a mobile
one, we want to reach the people where they are rather than attracting
them to a particular area."