Journalist Travis Lupick tells Vancouver, B.C.’s, story in his new book, ‘Fighting for Space’

published on May 25, 2018 by Joanne Zuhl, in street root news

The grassroots movement changed how people look at addiction and saved countless lives in the process

No major city in North America pushes the envelope on harm reduction further than Vancouver, B.C.

It started 20 years ago, when a group of drug users forced the city to look honestly at its drug problem and mounting death toll. But rather than blanch with shame and denial, they put convention to the test.

They formed a drug users union and openly advocated for harm reduction efforts, for the health and safety of users and non-users alike. In 2003, advocates and addicts worked against political opposition to open Insite, North America’s first supervised injection site. Since then, other mini-sites have opened across the city to provide a safe place for injecting drugs, free from police intervention, with clean needles and water to prevent the spread of disease. In later years, the anti-overdose medication naloxone became freely available over the counter and is now a common sight on city streets. Police have reduced the number of arrests for injection drug users in an effort to drive it out of the shadows and closer to health care and recovery.

And yes, it’s working.

Throughout those changes, illicit opioids remained just as cheap and easy to access as ever, however, the number of people seeking detox assistance went up and the numbers of users and overdoses in the neighborhood went down, according to a 15-year-long study by the B.C. Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS. And there was a 90 percent reduction in new HIV transmissions between 1996 and 2012, the study found.

Vancouver journalist Travis Lupick has authored a new book about that era and the grassroots movement that not only changed how people looked at addiction, but also saved countless lives. In “Fighting for Space: How a Group of Drug Users Transformed One City’s Struggle with Addiction,” available in June, Lupick tells Vancouver’s story, offering up its lessons for other communities confronting the opioid crisis.

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BC Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS

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Journalist Travis Lupick tells Vancouver, B.C.’s, story in his new book, ‘Fighting for Space’

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