Inside Insite: The battle to create B.C.'s supervised injection clinic

published on April 15, 2016 by ANDREA WOO, in The Globe and Mail

This story is part of A Killer High: A Globe examination into the rise of fentanyl in Canada.

Before there was fentanyl, the highly addictive opioid at the centre of an ongoing national crisis, there was OxyContin, another drug that took the lives of vulnerable populations. And before Oxy, there was heroin.

In Vancouver’s impoverished Downtown Eastside, heroin’s ravages helped tip the province into a public-health crisis in the late 1990s. Borne of necessity 13 years ago, Insite, a supervised-injection clinic that remains the only of its kind of North America, persevered under the Conservative government’s tough-on-crime anti-drug strategy, which ran counter to such treatment models. After successfully battling the government in a series of court cases, the facility has emerged as a model in harm reduction, representing a new approach to addiction treatment that the current Liberal government has embraced – and one many communities, including Toronto, are trying replicate.

Federal Health Minister Jane Philpott has publicly voiced support for harm-reduction facilities and, in January, visited Insite, describing the experience as “extremely moving.” Earlier this month, she further distanced her government’s approach from that of the Conservatives, noting that Health Canada is looking at developing a pan-Canadian approach to monitoring prescription drug abuse, as well as projects aimed at developing safer opioid prescribing practices.

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Inside Insite: The battle to create B.C.'s supervised injection clinic

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