Pubdate: Fri, 10 Feb 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 INJECTION SITE SHOULD BE IN VILLE MARIE: CACTUS MONTREAL - The city of Montreal opposes the location, and area residents are concerned it will add to the number of people seeking help for addiction. But the man in charge of Cactus, which has run a free needle exchange since 1989, says locating a supervised injection site (SIS) at the Sanguinet St. community centre is a logical choice. While Mayor Gerald Tremblay says any downtown SIS should be located in an existing medical facility, Cactus president Louis Letellier de St. Just notes that the final word rests with Quebec Health Minister Yves Bolduc. Letellier de St. Just believes that, in the end, the final word will be "yes" to an SIS at Cactus. "The minister committed himself publicly and privately as well," Letellier de St. Just told The Gazette on Thursday. "I'm not saying that Minister Bolduc won't consider the weight (of the concerns surrounding a downtown SIS) ... (but) it won't be the same weight for him as it is for Mayor Tremblay. And, once again, the city has no decisional power (on the project)." On Tuesday evening, during a contentious meeting of the Ville Marie borough council, Tremblay said any SIS in the area should be located in existing medical facilities. A coalition of local residents' groups calling for an SIS moratorium attended the meeting - the first public forum to hear a debate on the issue since the unveiling last December of a report by Montreal's public health department proposing three SISs in the city. The report - an effort to stem the number of overdose deaths and spread of HIV and hepatitis C caused by shared or reused syringes - also recommends that a mobile SIS be deployed where needed. The residents' coalition in Ville Marie has called on provincial health authorities to set up SISs in all regions of Quebec to reduce the number of out-of-town addicts being referred to social service centres in downtown Montreal. But Letellier de St. Just says an SIS must be located where the addicts are - and the addicts are in downtown Montreal. "For the last 25 years, all we hear is fear, fear, fear, based on nothing," he said. "Crime is going down in Ville Marie, and these are numbers from the Montreal police department. We're not going to fly people in from Honolulu to use our services. The people we're going serve are the same ones we're serving now." Cactus has prepared plans that would see its centre equipped with six cubicles to provide as many as 100 nursesupervised injections a day. Letellier de St. Just reminded Tremblay on Tuesday more than 90 per cent of intravenous addicts do not use the mainstream medical system. The debate over SIS in Montreal came to the fore after a Supreme Court decision last September found that an attempt by the federal government to shut down Vancouver's Insite clinic - North America's only nurse-supervised injection site - violated the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The number of intravenous drug users in Montreal has been estimated between 15,000-25,000. - --- MAP posted-by: Matt