Pubdate: Wed, 11 Jan 2012
Source: Montreal Gazette (CN QU)
Copyright: 2012 Canwest Publishing Inc.
Contact: http://www.canada.com/montrealgazette/letters.html
Website: http://www.montrealgazette.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/274
Author: James Mennie
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?142 (Supervised Injection Sites)

COALITION OF RESIDENTS FEARS 'NO MAN'S LAND' OF INJECTION SITES

Group Set to Confront Borough, Health Board

A coalition of residents' associations is poised to take its 
opposition to a proposal to introduce supervised-injection sites 
(SIS) downtown to its borough council and the board of directors of 
the local health board, a coalition spokesperson said on Tuesday.

Gaeetan Paquet, president of the Coalition des associations de 
residents de Ville-Marie, which represents about 45,000 of the 80,000 
residents of the downtown borough, said that the coalition's member 
associations would meet this month with Jocelyn Ann Campbell, 
Montreal executive committee member responsible for social and 
community development, as well as local police, in an effort to gauge 
the resulting fallout should supervisedinjection sites be established 
in the area.

"We residents want to know how we'll have to deal with it," he said.

"Will it be a no man's land?"

Paquet said his group intended to make its presence felt at a meeting 
of the Ville Marie borough council scheduled for Feb. 7, as well as a 
health board meeting scheduled for Feb. 14.

The group's members also intend to try and raise the issue with 
Quebec Health Minister Yves Bolduc.

Several downtown residents' associations formed the coalition after a 
proposal made public last month by Montreal's public health 
department that supervised-injection sites be established in Montreal.

The proposed sites, which health officials contend reduce the spread 
of HIV and hepatitis C and lower the number of overdose deaths, would 
be staffed by medical personnel and set up at fixed locations in 
three of four health department districts identified as possible 
candidates for the sites.

One district covers Verdun and the neighbouring area, another the 
west end of Montreal, the third covers much of downtown and the last 
covers the city's east end, including Hochelaga-Maisonneuve.

The report also called for the creation of a mobile 
supervisedinjection site able to reach areas not served by the other sites.

The number of intravenous-drug users in Montreal has been estimated 
at 15,000 to 25,000.

Paquet has said the city's downtown residents are already trying to 
deal with homelessness and crime in their neighbourhood.

He added that if supervised-injection sites are established in 
Montreal, they should be part of a province-wide network able to 
reach those struggling with addiction in other regions of Quebec.

"Right now, social workers (off the island of Montreal) are giving 
their cases a bus ticket to Montreal because that's where the 
resources are," he said.

While the health board report recommends that sites be located in 
medical establishments and community centres, a spokesperson for the 
public health office said last month that community centres already 
offering needle exchange programs would probably form the majority of sites.

That approach is at odds with the position taken by the city of 
Montreal, which favours the creation of more than one site but would 
prefer those sites be located in hospitals or CLSCs.

City officials also have called upon the province to make 
supervised-injection sites part of a larger health-care strategy that 
includes dealing with homelessness and a lack of psychiatric beds in the city.

Last October, Bolduc announced the province would work with community 
groups in Montreal and Quebec City to establish services for drug 
abusers. That announcement followed a Supreme Court decision in 
September that the federal government's attempt to shut down 
Vancouver's Insite clinic - North America's only nurse-supervised 
injection site - violates the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom