Vancouver’s safe injection site celebrates 10 years of saving lives

VANCOUVER – It has survived political venom and high court challenges that threatened to close it down, but two million injections later, North America’s only legal supervised injection site is marking a milestone anniversary.

InSite first began as a three-year pilot project to serve drug addicts when it opened its doors Sept. 21, 2003, in the centre of Vancouver’s drug-infested Downtown Eastside.

Vancouver-Coastal Health Authority’s medical health officer Dr. Patricia Daly says there’s no argument that the safe injection site has saved lives since then — in fact there has never been a fatal overdose at the site.

She says InSite has also helped cut the number of fatal drug overdoses throughout the poverty-stricken neighbourhood while contributing to a dramatic decline in illnesses linked to shared use of needles.

InSite has 12 supervised injection booths where clients are given clean needles and supplies to inject illegal drugs that addicts bring in on their own — drugs aren’t supplied.

The site operated under special rules until 2008 when Stephen Harper’s government attempted to end the exemption, but in 2011 the Supreme Court of Canada ruled unanimously to uphold Insite’s exemption under the controlled Drugs and Substances Act.