Proposed legislation threatens supervised injection sites

published on September 16, 2013

Recent tabling of the proposed Bill C-65 by Canada's federal government may threaten supervised injection sites like Vancouver's Insite, BC-CfE researchers write in CMAJ

"This proposed legislation seems to ignore evidence from a decade of experience in Vancouver and, in so doing, jeopardizes the expansion of these services to other Canadian cities where a need for them has been identified," argue Drs. Thomas Kerr, Julio Montaner, Evan Wood and Maria Zlotorzynska in a commentary.

Bill C-65 introduces new requirements for supervised injection sites and allows the minister of health sole authority to approve whether a facility should be granted a legal exemption. Current laws, from which Insite is permanently exempt, mean that anyone using a safe injection site could face criminal prosecution for drug possession.

Insite, which marks its 10-year anniversary Sept. 21, 2013, helps combat the epidemics of HIV and drug overdoses by offering a safe injection site for intravenous drug users to minimize the harm of contaminated needles and overdoses.

"A large body of peer-reviewed research, published in leading medical journals, has documented various benefits of the program including reductions in syringe sharing and fatal overdoses, and increased uptake of addiction treatment," write the authors. "Three separate studies have found Insite to be cost-effective."

The authors write that, although community consultation is important, the current bill "appears to be structured in such a way that the voices of opponents to harm reduction, however ill-informed, are privileged above others who speak to the robust evidence showing that supervised injection facilities save lives."

They argue that Bill C-65 should not be reintroduced into Parliament when the house sits in the fall unless it is substantially changed to reflect an evidence-based policy.

Read the full commentary HERE

ZSupervised injection sites: prejudice should not trump evidence of benefitDownload pdf

BC Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS

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Proposed legislation threatens supervised injection sites

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