Pubdate: Thu, 12 Apr 2012
Source: Ottawa Citizen (CN ON)
Copyright: 2012 The Ottawa Citizen
Contact: http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/letters.html
Website: http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/326
Author: Elizabeth Payne

A LACK OF INSITE

There's a proven way to save vulnerable lives and vastly improve
others, but elected officials fight it at every step

Every week in Ottawa, two people die of causes that are largely
preventable. Another two or three residents become infected with
diseases that will shorten and worsen their lives and may eventually
spread to others, something that could also be prevented.

Are those numbers remarkable? Maybe not. Injection drug use is, after
all, risky behaviour.

But here's what is remarkable: In a city in which people are known to
throw themselves into campaigns to help the sick and less fortunate,
many are unaware of, or indifferent to, those facts, or even that
Ottawa has an injection drug problem.

More remarkable still is that the official attitude toward those who
will die of drug overdoses this week or next, or who will contract HIV
or Hepatitis C, is not simply indifference, but disapproval and blame.

Ottawa does have an injection drug problem and, along with it, a
serious infectious disease transmission problem. There is no single,
or simple, solution. But harm reduction in the form of places where
addicts can inject drugs safely will save lives, improve others, and
help some addicts get off drugs.

Peer-reviewed research supports the good that safe injection sites do
from many angles. The Supreme Court of Canada has opened the door to
other sites besides Vancouver's controversial Insite. Now, an
extensive report recommends bringing safe injection to Ottawa.

So why do many of those in power - from federal cabinet ministers to
Ottawa Mayor Jim Watson - fight it every step of the way?

It makes no sense, but that is the reality of harm reduction in
Canada, especially safe injection sites. And the battleground has
shifted to Ottawa with the release of the longawaited report
recommending not one, but two, safe injection sites in the city, near
where the addicts are. The "Toronto and Ottawa Supervised Consumption
Assessment," a study from Ahmed Bayoumi from the Centre for Research
on Inner City Health at St. Michael's Hospital and Carol Strike at the
University of Toronto's Dalla Lana School of Public Health says Ottawa
would benefit from locations where addicts could inject drugs safely.

A group of concerned citizens is already discussing setting one up.
Isn't it time politicians got out of the way?

An Ottawa safe injection site makes sense to people such as Wendy
Muckle, the executive director of Ottawa Inner City Health, who sees
the effects of injection drug abuse daily in her work. "I don't want
people to die, and I don't want them to be infected by HIV and
Hepatitis C. I think most citizens would want their fellow citizens
safer." Muckle says safe injection sites are just one strategy to
reduce harm from drug addiction, and she says Ottawa should not expect
to plant a replica of Vancouver's Insite clinic in downtown Ottawa
because that probably would fail. "We need to go through a thoughtful
process of talking it out as a community," she said, noting that her
organization ran managed alcohol programs - a similar concept for
alcoholics - that were designed in Ottawa and had been both successful
and relatively uncontroversial.

That might be too much to ask for a safe injection site, though,
something that has been a political flashpoint in Vancouver and across
the country and something the federal government fought all the way to
the Supreme Court.

Insite, which incorporates the view that addiction is an issue of
health, not policing, has reduced overdose deaths and infectious
disease transmission rates in the city. It has also been successful in
getting addicts off drugs, which is a stated goal of the federal
Conservative government. Still, Tony Clement, while health minister,
said he believed it was a form of "harm addition."

Locally, the official line is much the same. Mayor Watson and Police
Chief Charles Bordeleau both oppose a safe injection site in Ottawa.
Former police chief Vern White, now a Conservative Senator, said while
still chief that such a site would have an "extreme negative impact"
on the local community.

If these seem like insurmountable odds against such a program setting
up in Ottawa, Dr. Mark Tyndall, head of infectious diseases at the
Ottawa Hospital, does not see it that way.

Tyndall, who has been outspoken about the need for a safe injection
site in Ottawa, is unfazed by the politics surrounding the issue.

"I don't see a lot of hurdles. We have strong evidence and the backing
of the Supreme Court."

"The police can do a lot to obstruct this kind of site, but, at the
end of the day, this is a health issue and they are not health
providers. The Supreme Court didn't say anything about having your
police force on side or the mayor. It would be nice, but it doesn't
have to happen." 
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