Lawyers, doctors and addicts at public forum urge Vancouver to save Insite
Illustration by Karen Chan
"I believe this is an issue coming about our collective humanity," Portland Hotel Society director Liz Evans said at a public forum last night about Insite, the safe injection site that serves addicts in the Downtown Eastside. "People who have used substances to cope should not be viewed as different." She said that Insite does not encourage drug use, but allowed drug users -- who could be relatives, friends or neighbours of non-drug users -- to live with their addictions in a respectful manner. Referring to the federal government's efforts since 2006 close down Insite, she said, "Conservatives believe that some peoples' lives matter more than others".
The forum last night at the Djavad Mowafaghian Cinema at SFU Woodwards on Hastings Street drew about 400 people, ranging from high school students to senior residents of the DTES. They gathered to hear speakers who defended Insite last week before the Supreme Court in Ottawa.
Photo of Insite Supreme Court hearing video by Jenny Uechi
In between clips of video footage of the Insite court hearing from Ottawa, the speakers gave an impassioned defense of North America's only safe injection site from different perspectives on the issue.
Ethos Law Group lawyer Monique Pongracic-Speier said closing Insite would be unconstitutional and a violation of human rights, as it would force current Insite users to take drugs in dangerous situations -- in alleyways, at home alone -- and threaten their security of person, which is a basic entitlement guaranteed by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Poet and VANDU founder Bud Osborne recounted of the overdose death of a First Nations woman and subsequent suicide of her husband that mobilized him to call for North America's first safe injection site. "If there was an Insite then, they would be here with us today," he said in an emotional tone.
Dean Wilson photo by Jenny Uechi
Former VANDU president Dean Wilson said that it would be a "personal affront to the City of Vancouver" if the Conservative government was allowed to shut Insite down, given the widespread support for the facility among Vancouverites. He stressed the need for more safe injection sites in the Downtown Eastside, with its estimated 4,000 - 5,000 intraveneous drug users. VANDU board member Dave Murray, who said that Insite saved his life in past years, spoke of the desperate need for a safe injection site in cities like Regina and Saskatoon, which he visited on the way back from the Supreme Court case.
On the public health benefits of the Insite, Dr. Will Small from the B.C. Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS emphasized that HIV infection rates, overdose deaths and public disorder had gone down significantly since the site's opening. Showing a PowerPoint presentation of news clippings and charts, he spoke of how political ideology denied proven scientific evidence of the public health benefits of safe injection.
"Supervised injection has become mainstream in public health," said Maxine Davis, the executive director of the Dr. Peter AIDS Foundation. She said she was grateful to see judges "blatantly critical" of the federal government's argument to shut the facility down, and said that the government may "regret the day it took Insite to the Supreme Court of Canada".
During discussions at the end of the presentations, VANDU members said that if the Supreme Court ruled in favour of the federal government, they would take active "civil disobedience" and open a non-government sanctioned safe injection facility of their own, as B.C. nurse Megan Olsen had done before the opening of Insite. If the ruling was in Insite's favour, Wilson said it would open doors for a safe "consumption" site, which would allow for the safe consumption of non-intraveneous drugs such as cocaine.
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(6) Comments
So its OK to help people break the law?
Every one of these people should be in handcuffs.
Helping people push themselves even farther into the gutter is good for them?
Liberalism is a mental disorder!
To be honest I am pretty divided on this issue. On the one hand I hate drugs and I think the more drugs you do the harder it is to get back in society. But I also think it is not right to let people die in the street because it's morally wrong and also costs a lot of money for taxpayers. Probably drug users have problems that cause them to use drugs and maybe Insite can help people to help themselves. But then again, there are people who use for 20,30,40 years...who is to say that Insite will convince them to stop?
In fact it is not illegal to USE drugs, just to possess them. But InSite is helping people to use them in a way that doesn't put their own security or "public" security at risk. Do you prefer that people use drugs in public toilets, parks and alleys? Cause that's what will happen if InSite is closed. InSite is not there to "convince" anyone to quit drugs (that is not how it works), but when people are ready to quit, they will get the support they need there -and that won't happen if InSite is closed. Having a closed mind maybe not a "mental disorder", but it sure doesn't help to have an intelligent debate about such an important issue.
The key difference between those who support Insite and those who oppose it, is how people understand drug addiction. Those who would close Insite believe drug addiction is a moral issue. Drug addicts are immoral, or weak, or bad, or less good people than those of us who aren't addicted. If they would only try harder and buckle down a bit, their problem would be solved. We who support Insite and harm reduction understand drug addiction to be a health care issue. Addiction is a physiological condition. It's not about good people and bad people. It's about people who have a particular kind of illness. If someone has cancer, we don't tell them to try harder to get better. We provide a range of treatment, including treatment that sometimes simply keeps them alive so they have a chance of getting better with medication or therapy that comes later. That's Insite. If cancer victims get better for a while and then their cancer comes back, we don't blame them for having fallen off the wagon. But that's exactly what we do with people who have addictions. All of the scientific literature tells us that addiction is an illness. It needs to be treated as an illness. When we treat illness our goal is to save lives and maximize the quality of those lives. That's Insite.
Maybe YOU need to open your mind, Francois. Why don't you try to understand that maybe some people like me have been around drug addicts and felt threatened by them? I'm just trying to live my life and in case you didn't read my comment, I am against people dying in the streets, OK? HOWEVER I really don't buy the argument that people can't quit. If you've been on heroin for 40 years and people tell you for 40 years that you should stop and you ignore them, it is a LIFESTYLE CHOICE. No one injects that needle but you. I am willing to see my tax dollars support people who want to stop. But I sure as hell don't know why we should be throwing money at people who have no job and zero intention of quitting whatever drug they're taking and expecting others to pay for it. Explain that one to me please.