Pubdate: Tue, 01 Dec 2015
Source: Ottawa Sun (CN ON)
Copyright: 2015 Canoe Limited Partnership
Contact: http://www.ottawasun.com/letter-to-editor
Website: http://www.ottawasun.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/329
Author: Susan Sherring
Page: 4

STILL NOT SOLD ON SAFE INJECTION SITES

It's been just a little more than two years since Donna May, the
mother of a dead drug addict, came to Ottawa to plead for a safe
injection site in the nation's capital.

Her message couldn't have been more clear or more heartbreaking.

"Mine is a hard story to tell. If you have already formed an opinion,
based on what you've been told, or educated by what your community
leaders have guided you to believe, I used to be one of you," she said
back in October 2013.

"There is no worse blind man than the one who does not want to see. I
changed my opinion completely and my hope in sharing my story is to at
least open your mind."

May, who lives in Toronto, was feeling safe in her suburban lifestyle
when her daughter began taking drugs.

With her story, she could have been speaking directly to me - and to
many of my suburban friends and thousands of others who just
inherently feel without any real justification that safe injection
sites are absolutely wrong.

The good news about her appearance calling for safe injection sites is
that May did cause many of us in the room to think more thoughtfully
about our somewhat instinctive and very negative reaction to safe
injection sites. For sure, it's a hard sell. Both Ottawa Mayor Jim
Watson and Ottawa Police Chief Chuck Bordeleau have publicly come out
against them. No surprise there. There just seems to be something so
wrong to not just sanction but enable drug use.

Still very hard to get your head around.

May called on the crowd gathered in downtown Ottawa for a public
discussion on safe injection sites - admitting that she was so ashamed
of her daughter, some of her own friends were unaware she even had
one.

It wasn't until her daughter was dying, that they reconnected and
learned from one another what the other had been going through over
the years.

Supervised consumption sites are public health facilities that offer a
safe, hygienic place where people can use their own drugs under
medical supervision.

Canada's first supervised injection site, Insite, has been operating
since 2003 in downtown Vancouver.

The evidence from Insite - and from more than 90 such sites around the
world - suggests that supervised consumption sites reduce the spread
of diseases such as HIV, prevent overdose deaths, and improve access
to addiction treatment programs. They have also been shown to
encourage cleaner, safer streets by reducing public drug use and drug
equipment litter.

A recently-released study is bound to renew that debate.

New research is making a financial argument in its call for opening
five supervised-injection sites across Ontario, including two in Ottawa.

New research suggests it makes strong financial sense given the
increasing effectiveness of hepatitis C treatment.

In fact, the study says there's a 90% chance that safer injection
sites in Ottawa just makes financial sense.

Unfortunately for proponents, it's just an incredibly hard
sell.

In Ottawa, there's a organization called the Campaign for Safer
Consumption Sites in Ottawa, formed in response to what the group
describes as an ongoing health crisis.

"Ottawa has Ontario's highest rate of new HIV infection among
injection drug users. Eleven per cent of people who inject drugs in
Ottawa are infected with HIV, while 70% have contracted hepatitis C.
Someone dies of drug overdose every 8 days in our city - deaths that
could be prevented with timely medical intervention," the group's
website states.

But numbers just don't beat emotion.

And almost certainly, if I didn't have kids myself, I wouldn't have
heard any part of May's message.

But to hear her state that she unequivocally believes a safe injection
site could have saved her daughter, well it makes you pause, pause and
wonder.

Just because I've never faced what May endured doesn't weaken her
message.

But May accomplished much of why she came to Ottawa to speak. She got
people thinking. That of course, is all May ever asked for.
- ---
MAP posted-by: Matt