Toronto, Ottawa would benefit from safe injection sites: report

TORONTO – A four-year study looking at the value of expanding safe injection sites suggests that both Toronto and Ottawa would benefit from these contentious facilities.

University of Toronto and St. Michael’s Hospital researchers collaborated in the lengthy report, released Monday, that was requested by both cities in 2008.

After years of independent research, they recommended that Toronto should open three supervised injection sites while another two should be opened in Ottawa.

“Using multiple sources of data, we projected that supervised injection facilities would prevent HIV and hepatitis C injections and result in meaningful health benefits for people who use drugs in Toronto and Ottawa,” Dr. Carol Strike, one of the lead investigators, said in a statement.

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There is demand for facilities similar to Insite in Ottawa and Toronto, the researchers say. Up to 75 per cent of people using drugs in these cities said they would head to the site if it existed. Most of these Canadians were those who lived on the street, were unaware of how to find sterile equipment or people who injected in public.

The concept of a safe injection site is controversial. It provides addicts with a safe place to inject drugs with sterile needles, but they also receive addiction treatment, mental health assistance and first aid.

Vancouver’s Insite facility, which is the first in the country, faced an uphill battle against the federal government that has insisted Ottawa shouldn’t be involved in the business of facilitating drug use.

Insite was set up in 2003 in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, an area notorious for its open drug market, HIV epidemic and large numbers of homelessness.

By September 2011, Insite’s fight against Ottawa made its way to the highest court in Canada, where judges ruled that the facility should remain open and that its closure could threaten public health and safety.

The ruling, a major success for Insite supporters, ordered the federal government to grant an immediate exemption so the facility could stay open.

The exemption, which Ottawa and Toronto, would have to obtain, allows employees and users to handle drugs without facing trafficking or possession charges.

The researchers behind the call to expand safe injection sites say that it’s now up to Toronto and Ottawa municipalities to decide if they should proceed with their recommendations. They did not look into specific locations.

They do suggest, however, that both cities should open multiple locations instead of a central location, which is the model Vancouver follows.

That’s because drug use is dispersed in Ontario’s two largest cities, while in Vancouver, it’s largely limited to the Downtown Eastside.

The report points to a plethora of research that shows the drug site helps reduce fatal overdoses – in Vancouver, it slashed drug fatalities by 35 per cent, according to one study published in the Lancet in April 2011.