Victoria has taken another step closer to establishing supervised injection sites in the city.
The city has been invited by the federal minister of health to apply for an exemption from the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act for a supervised drug consumption site.
“I continually look for ways to keep Canadians healthy and reduce risks and harms to them,” Health Minister Jane Philpott says in a letter to Victoria Mayor Lisa Helps.
“For this reason the government’s approach to supervised consumption sites will be guided by evidence, which in this case is clear — when properly established and managed, supervised consumption sites can save lives and improve health without increasing drug use and crime in the surrounding area.”
Victoria council has made the provision of safe consumption services by the end of 2016 part of its strategic plan.
“Whether or not we’ll actually have safe consumption services available by 2016 is yet to be seen,” Helps said.
Supervised consumption sites provide drug-users with a clean, safe space to use drugs under the supervision of health professionals. Supporters say they prevent overdose deaths and reduce the transmission of HIV and other blood-borne diseases by offering clean supplies, while critics say they facilitate the use of illegal drugs.
While the previous federal government was opposed to supervised consumption sites, the new Liberal government is more open to the idea.
Helps said in an interview that the city is part of a group of organizations trying to bring supervised consumption services to the city.
“There are a number of bodies working together to get such an application ready,” she said, adding that the city is playing a facilitative role.
The city is interested in providing safe consumption services alongside other health services, Helps said, rather than having a standalone safe consumption site.
Locations have not yet been determined.
The city had initially set 2017 as its target for getting safe consumption services, but moved it up in response to a spike in drug overdose deaths.
The number of overdose deaths linked to fentanyl has spiked in the past year, according to a B.C. coroner’s report issued Wednesday. The report found that in the first half of 2016, there were 371 deaths from illicit drug overdose, an increase of 74.2 per cent from the same time period in 2015. In 60 per cent of those deaths, fentanyl was detected in toxicology tests, either alone or in combination with other illicit drugs.
Helps said the numbers underscore the need for safe consumption services.
“Addiction, as we all know, is a health issue and needs to be treated as such,” she said.
“There’s terrible drugs that are out there right now and it’s not just the people on the street who are using. There have been a lot of overdoses by people living in their parents’ basements or whatever.
“It’s a health issue and it needs a health response.”
The Dr. Peter Centre, an HIV/AIDS clinic in Vancouver, received permission in January to operate a supervised injection site, becoming the second approved facility in Canada after Insite, a supervised injection site in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside.
