The first sanctioned supervised injection site on the continent marked its 20th anniversary in Vancouver on Thursday, having opened in 2003 under a special exemption to Health Canada’s drug laws.
Insite in the Downtown Eastside is operated by Vancouver Coastal Health and the PHS Community Services Society. It provides guidance, safe tools and supervision for drug use, and when possible, connects drug users to housing and other services.
“Oftentimes this is the first place that they’ve actually been in where it’s warm and dry and safe. By providing a welcoming environment, we’re letting people know that this is their home,” said Susan Alexman, director of programs for PHS.
“We are working to reduce the harms that they face in their daily lives and also to provide a non-stigmatized environment for them to be able to share information as needed.”
A key goal is to reduce the rate of blood-borne pathogens such as HIV and Hepatitis C, she added, as well as preventing serious injury and death from the toxic drug supply.
Insite’s anniversary arrived on the same day the B.C. government announced the federal government’s approval for a provincewide ban on possession illegal drugs at playgrounds, spray pools, wading pools and skate parks.
The enforceable ban takes effect Monday within 15 metres of the areas identified, despite B.C.’s ongoing decriminalization experiment allowing people to possess small amounts of certain illegal drugs of personal use.
“We requested this amendment from Health Canada to ensure that families feel safe in their community while continuing to use every tool available to fight the toxic-drug crisis and save lives,” Mental Health and Addictions Minister Jennifer Whiteside said in a Thursday news release.
British Columbia is in the throes of an unabating toxic drug crisis, which as of July, had claimed at least 12,739 lives.
Unregulated drug toxicity is the leading cause of death in the province for people between 10 and 59, accounting for more deaths than homicides, suicides, accidents, and natural diseases combined.
Vancouver Coastal Health’s deputy chief medical health officer, Dr. Mark Lysyshyn, said services like Insite are even more important now than they were 20 years ago. In its two decades of operation, he added, Insite has learned valuable lessons that have paved the way for some 40 overdose prevention sites now operating across the province.
“We were able to establish Canada’s first drug-checking program here at Insite and prove that this is a service that would be of benefit to people and could be offered safely at supervised consumption sites,” he added.
“We were also able to document here just how dangerous fentanyl made the drug supply because the Insite database is the most comprehensive database on overdoses in the world.”
Guy Felicella battled addiction in the Downtown Eastside for decades and has overdosed six times in his lifetime. Over 10 years, he said he has visited Insite more than 4,000 times and it changed — and saved — his life.
He overdosed at the site in 2013 and woke up to a nurse telling him she cared about him. He said he burst into tears, decided he didn’t want to use anymore, and was monitored for the next several hours.
“I’ve never forgotten the people who, at this facility, dedicated their time throughout my life to support me at the darkest moments of my life,” said Felicella, who is now sober and a peer clinical adviser for the BC Centre on Substance Use.
“This facility has constantly been there to support me to get out, whether it was a taxi voucher to a treatment facility, whether it was bringing me upstairs. The life I have today would not exist if this facility didn’t exist.”
He said the connection clients build with the community at Insite empowers them to make different choices, and he has felt loved there.
More than 4 million individual visits to Insite have taken place since it opened in 2003, and thousands of overdoses have been treated on-site.
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