A few years ago I visited a storefront building called InSite – the first supervised injection facility in North America. There, I saw first hand that, paradoxically, providing a safe place to take illicit drugs can be a key component to treating addiction.
Located in Vancouver’s East Hastings neighborhood, the building was clean and the environment felt safe; I immediately noticed the rapport between the staff and the clients, who were mostly injection drug users.
Clients arrived with what they were bringing to inject (usually heroin or cocaine) and gave their names to a staff member. The staffer then logged this information before the clients went upstairs to the injection stalls, where syringes and other paraphernalia were available.
At one point, I heard a siren and saw an ambulance pull up across the street from the facility. The staffer and I looked out the front window as two first responders ran up the steps of a dilapidated building and returned carrying an unconscious woman on a stretcher. As they put her in the back of the ambulance, the staffer explained that the building was a shooting gallery – a place where drug users rent rooms to inject together.
“She should have come here,” she said. “We have a nurse on staff.”