Political opposition to drug harm reduction centres is nothing new. Insite-a supervised injection site located in the downtown eastside of Vancouver has encountered nothing but disdain from Stephen Harper's federal government, while the UN's International Narcotics Control Board routinely condemns various harm reduction centres abroad for violating international treaties concerning narcotic drugs. The U.S. government has also been an outspoken global critic of harm reduction projects that provide legal exemptions for drug use ever since Richard Nixon coined the term "war on drugs." Therefore, it should come as no surprise that early efforts by the San Francisco Department of Public Health to open America's first legal safe-injection site have been met by political stonewalling and moral indignation.
The scientific evidence supporting supervised injection sites is overwhelmingly positive. Insite, the only facility of its kind in North America, has been the subject of over a dozen studies conducted by the BC Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS, none of which have uncovered a single negative effect of the SIS. Furthermore some of the positive effects revealed in their peer-reviewed research are extremely encouraging: Insite has reduced the overall rate of needle sharing in the area, led to increased enrollment in detox programs and has not led to an increase in drug-related crime or intravenous drug usage.
Nurses at Insite provide care for wounds, supply users with sterile drug paraphernalia and educate users about sanitary practices that cut down on the spread of HIV and Hepatitis C. They are also on-hand for any overdoses-of which there have been over 800 at Insite. Thanks to prompt medical care, not a single overdose at the facility has resulted in a fatality and, not coincidentally, emergency room visits for intravenous drug users are down dramatically. Unnecessary hospital visits are prevented by simple care at an SIS, saving tax-payers money and cutting waitlists at emergency rooms.
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