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On Insite
Submitted by jacob on Tue, 06/03/2008 - 14:45
Vancouver's safe injection site, Insite, has been the subject of much media hype as of late. Insite allows addicted drug users to inject their drugs in the presence of health-care workers trained in overdose prevention.
Over the past year, Insite prevented 222 overdose deaths, provided first aid to 3,862 addicts and referred 2,269 to mental health and addiction services. Insite has been positively reviewed in every peer-reviewed study conducted, 22 of them to date(1). The research in short shows that Insite is working(2).
Insite has the support of the city of Vancouver, the Vancouver Police department, the Coastal Health Authority, the province of British Columbia, including the premier and health minister, as well as 65%(3) of Vancouver residents(4).
Insite was operating under a federal exemption from drug laws, an exemption that was set to expire on June 30th. The Conservative federal health Minister, Tony Clement, initially requested more scientific study on the site, including 2 government funded studies; the studies both came back supportive of Insite. Clement recently, without supportive evidence, went so far as to lecture a parliamentary committee hearing into Insite, including numerous health experts, saying “Supervised injection is not medicine. It does not heal the person addicted to drugs”.
Last week, Justice Ian Pitfield of the BC Supreme Court disagreed, granting Insite a permanent exemption from drug laws, saying “While there is nothing to be said in favour of the injection of controlled substances that leads to addiction, there is much to be said against denying addicts health care services that will ameliorate the effects of their condition”(5). The decision declared drug possession and trafficking laws unconstitutional and overly broad, but gave the government 1 year to pass new drug laws before the existing ones are struck down.
The Conservative government and Clement decried the decision, calling for an appeal. Clement cited as reason for the appeal a “significant degree of uncertainty in the research”(6) despite his inability to reference a single peer-reviewed source for the claim. The Conservative government funded two of it's own studies of Insite, both concluded that Insite encourages users to enter treatment, acts as a deterrent to drug use, and finally that for every $1 spent on Insite, $4 were saved on health and policing(7).
Instead, Clement has chosen to rely on a single, unpublished and not peer-reviewed report by a staunch drug prevention advocate, paid for by the RCMP(8). The report(9), by Colin Mangham of the Drug Prevention Network of Canada, a group with ties to the Conservative party, is opinion without any research or analysis to support it. Mangham states that since Insite opened, overdose deaths have increased in Vancouver, and therefore, Insite isn't working; is this true? In fact, no, overdose deaths decreased from 307 in the almost 4 years prior to Insite being open to 223 in the same period after it opened, a decrease of 84 deaths(10). The rest of the report is equally as unscientific and blatantly incorrect, which is likely why it was never published, unlike the 22 studies which support Insite.
BC health minister, George Abbott publicly denounced Clements decision to appeal the Insite decision, describing Insite as “critical for BC” and stating that BC may apply for intervenor status in the appeal. Abbot went on to describe Insite as “important in the continuum of care for people with addictions and for people with mental illness” and made it clear he supports the possibility of more safe injection sites in BC(11).
The Conservative party and it's health minister, Tony Clement, are ignoring a mass of science in support of Insite in favour of no scientific support for their drug strategy(12). The Conservatives drug policies are based on a continuation of the failed drug war, on continuing “prevention” programs which have been shown to actually encourage drug use by regularizing the use of drugs, and of attempting to imprison everyone out of addiction. Indeed, the policy advocated by Mangham and others close to Tony Clement is the incarceration of drug users in 3 year, “treatment” facilities, against their will(13).
Canadians deserve government that will base policy decisions on science and facts, not opinions and ideology. Insite and safe injection sites like it, are public health tools that help societies most vulnerable and abused individuals. The BC Marijuana Party supports Insite, along with the expansion of that service to other locals, and to include maintenance programs.
If we want to end the property crime associated with drug users, we need to consider why that crime exists in the first place. Drug users break into homes and cars to steal, to pay dealers massive prices for what amounts to very cheap drugs. If governments purchased coca and opium from farmers in countries like Columbia and Afghanistan, it could do so at very little cost, while stabilizing those countries and removing the influence of drug cartels, the only other purchaser of those crops. Government could then in turn provide those drugs to addicts directly through sites like Insite, removing the profits of drugs from the organized criminals who deal them, while also removing the need to steal from addicts. Such a program would cost governments almost nothing, while at the same time saving lives, both at home and abroad.
(1)1
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(4)4
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, executive summary available here
(8)Vancouver Sun, May 12 2007 also here
(9)9
(10)Comparison of raw data, available: here and
here
(11)11
(12)12
(13)13
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