Pubdate: Mon, 04 Apr 2016
Source: Sudbury Star (CN ON)
Copyright: 2016 Osprey Media
Contact: http://www.thesudburystar.com/letters
Website: http://www.thesudburystar.com
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/608
Author: Andrew Duffy
Page: 6

'EVIDENCE-BASED APPROACH' TO ADDICTION

Ottawa health centre joins list of proposed safe-injection
sites

OTTAWA - Public consultations begin Monday on a controversial proposal
by the Sandy Hill Community Health Centre to give injection-drug users
a safe place to feed their addictions.

The health centre wants to add a small-scale facility - with room for
four or five injection drug users - to its existing cluster of services.

"The goal for us is to provide some education to the local community
in terms of some of the myths and misunderstandings about a supervised
injection service," said health centre executive Rob Boyd. "And we
want to hear what they have to say about our service model."

The safe injection site, he said, can address the principal health
risks faced by drug users - overdoses and infections - while also
reducing the number of people injecting in public places and
discarding their needles.

A preliminary budget suggests the service would cost an additional
$250,000 to $300,000 a year, money that would have to come from the
province through the regional health authority, the Champlain LHIN.

The Sandy Hill Community Health Centre already offers a
needle-exchange program, counselling, medical and social services to
about 700 injection drug users in downtown Ottawa. It would be a
natural evolution for the health centre, Boyd said, to offer clients
clean needles along with the option of injecting their drugs under a
nurse's supervision.

Surveys conducted by the health centre suggest addicts will not walk
more than 10 or 15 minutes to use a supervised injection service. It
means the centre is not expecting a big increase in client numbers.

"We're hoping there will be a slight increase in numbers - people
coming in because we're offering supervised injection - but we think
it's important for people to know that it's not like we're offering no
services, and suddenly there's going to be 700 injection drug users
coming here."

Boyd hopes to present a detailed plan to the health centre's board of
directors in June, then submit an application for federal government
approval this fall. If the government grants it an exemption from
federal drug control laws, the safe injection site could open at this
time next year.

It has been more than a decade since activists in Ottawa first raised
the possibility of opening a safe injection site in this city. Boyd
said he's optimistic that the plan will finally come to fruition, even
though Mayor Jim Watson and Police Chief Charles Bordeleau remain
opposed to the idea.

Watson has said that limited tax dollars are better spent on drug
treatment programs, while the police have suggested the facility would
concentrate drug crime in the neighbourhood.

Chad Rollins, president of Action Sandy Hill, said the residents'
association is not yet in a position to comment on the safe injection
site proposal. It will be meeting with health centre officials in May.

Rideau-Vanier Coun. Mathieu Fleury said he doesn't know whether Ottawa
needs a safe injection site like the one in Vancouver, which has a
much larger population of addicts. He plans to ask the city's medical
officer of health for an updated profile of the city's injection drug
users, and for an analysis of overdose deaths in Ottawa.

Currently, Vancouver is home to Canada's only government-sanctioned
safe injection sites. Such facilities must receive a federal
government exemption from the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act in
order to operate legally.

The previous Conservative government tried to shut down the country's
largest safe injection site, Insite, but the Supreme Court of Canada
ruled in 2011 that the attempt was arbitrary, disproportionate and
unconstitutional.

The Conservatives responded to that decision by passing a law, the
Respect for Communities Act, that puts onerous new conditions on any
group that wants to open a safe injection service.

The new Liberal government, however, has already signalled that it
believes in harm-reduction programs. Health Minister Jane Philpott has
approved the country's second safe injection site - a small facility
that had been quietly operating for years in Vancouver - and has made
the drug naloxone more widely available as a treatment for opioid overdoses.

Philpott has said that she's in favour of "evidence-based approaches"
to substance abuse.

Safe injection sites are now also under consideration in Montreal,
Toronto, Thunder Bay, London and Victoria as cities struggle to
address soaring overdose rates.

Overdoses have skyrocketed in Canada alongside the rising availability
of fentanyl, a powerful narcotic that is relatively easy to
manufacture and is often mixed with other drugs, such as heroin.

In the United States, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
says that country is in the midst of an opioid overdose epidemic:
Between 2000 and 2014, nearly half a million Americans died from drug
overdoses. The annual number of overdose deaths almost tripled during
that time.
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