A new study reported that Vancouver’s controversial safe drug injection site is saving money and lives.
Some in Ottawa said it’s time for a similar facility, which would give addicts a clean and safe place to inject drugs such as heroin, to open here.
The study, published in the Nov. 18 issue of the Canadian Medical Association Journal, analyzed the cost-effectiveness of Insite, the only safe drug injection site in North America located in Vancouver.
It reported $14 million in savings to the healthcare system from reduced needle sharing and lower rates of Hepatitis C and HIV infection. It also said the site, which opened in 2003, was saving lives.
Khaled Salam, support services co-ordinator for the AIDS Committee of Ottawa, said the recent report is just one of many that show Ottawa should provide a similar service.
“I dream of the day when we will have a safe injection site in Ottawa,” he said. “I feel that we are so far behind.”
Salam said the facilities work, partly because they treat drug users as human beings.
“At safe injection sites, people who use drugs are treated with respect and dignity,” he said. “They give people options. They work.”
Researchers estimate that 3,300 to 5,300 injection drug users live in Ottawa, with HIV and Hepatitis C rates at 21 and 76 per cent, respectively. Vancouver has the highest rates in the country.
The new study’s authors, however, warned of extrapolating the findings to other cities such as Ottawa. Isra Levy, Ottawa’s chief medical officer, shared these concerns and said local research would be required.
“Any project of this nature would need to undergo a feasibility study, broad community consultations and rigorous research,” he said.
But at least one local scientist said Ottawa is ready for a site of its own. Lynne Leonard, a University of Ottawa epidemiologist, conducted a two-year study on the viability of such a facility in Ottawa.
“It’s very clear that for Ottawa [a safe injection site] would fit very well and definitely relieve the community’s concern of public injections,” she told The Sun this March.
The idea was raised before, without much success. Meanwhile, less radical harm reduction strategies, which treat drug use as a public health issue and not a criminal one, have been challenged. In July 2007, the city cancelled its funding for the Safe Inhalation Program, which gives addicts free crack pipes.
The province picked up the city’s share of the funding, and the program now runs out of the Somerset West Community Health Centre. The centre also has a needle exchange program, as does the Living Room, a drop-in program on Bank Street in Centretown that’s run by the AIDS Committee of Ottawa.
But Andre Bigras of the Drug Prevention Network of Canada, which promotes abstinence-based drug policies, said these programs send a mixed message.
“We’re telling kids, ‘don’t do drugs, but here’s needles,” he said. “Don’t do drugs, but here’s crack pipes.”
Bigras said the network doesn’t agree with Vancouver’s Insite and would not support its replication in Ottawa, adding that other measures are more important.
“What I would like to see is more emphasis on treatment, on prevention, and on proper enforcement,” he said.
Salam said, however, that harm reduction programs cost little and prevent diseases that cost much more to treat.
According to a June 2008 report prepared for city council by Levy, each new HIV case costs the city and the healthcare system from $150,000 to $600,000.
“Why the government doesn’t get that, I’m not quite sure,” said Salam, referring to both the city’s cuts and the federal government’s opposition to Insite.