Insite Research Paper

InSite: A Harm Reduction Program

Insite is the first legalized drug injection site in North American, it is located in Vancouver, Canada. Insite offers a safe place to inject or smoke illegal drugs, primarily heroin. Insite does not provide the drugs but they do offer medical help to anyone needing it. In 2009, 276,178 visits were recoded, and 484 overdoses occurred with no deaths, (Wikipedia, n. d).

There has been major controversy over Insite treatment, especially under the Harper government. There is controversy over the fact that a government – sanctioned institution is facilitating an illegal act. The effectiveness of InSite in deterring or treating addictions also has been challenged. (Stueck, 2011).

The value assumption for legal

injection sites is that addicts are people who would benefit from a support system like InSite that could give them the tools to get over their addiction; another value assumption would that InSite values human life. The reality assumption is that some of these people will not use these tools to get over their addictions and will continue to be drug addicts.
Does a facility like InSite encourage crime? Does a facility like InSite encourage drug use? Having a legal injection site doesn’t mean that more people will use drugs. “The presence of Insite did not contribute to increased crime rates, increased incidents of public injection, or relapse rates in injection drug users.” (Boyd, 2013) Actually the contrary happened InSite was viewed favorably by neighborhood organizations as a there was a decrease in community drug paraphernalia. “InSite has reduced the number of people injecting in public, and the amount of injection-related litter in the downtown” (Drucker, 2006). InSite is open to everyone, and that has caused concerns with some people in the community since they think that individuals will be influenced by the legal injection site, and will go and try drugs without being addicted. The problems with this is that even if people were to come off the street and try drugs, InSite is a better place for them than anywhere else. There is one record of a young woman entering InSite who had never injected before, and was intoxicated (which raises her chance of overdosing) and InSite made the decision to let her in (Quan, 2016) but if they had turned her away, what’s to stop her from shooting up in the back alley? At least in the safe injection site, there is no chance of infected needles, or HIV risk. The article in National Post almost seemed like the devil’s advocate; what would happen if non-addicted people came by and wanted to try? But what’s stopping them from shooting up at all? Humans are given freedoms that we have to deal with, it’s not the government’s place to try and tell citizens how to live their lives. When Tony Clement wanted to close inSite in 2008, backlash occurred where “Life, liberty and security of the person is being endangered under Section 7 of the Charter of Rights” (Wells, 2011); it’s not the government’s place to tell people how to live.
How effective is InSite in deterring or treating addictions? First, InSite does not claim to be in the business of deterring. The roots of addiction are usually complicated and part of more significant personal issues. Controlling access to drugs has not proven to be a success at deterring addiction. Second, InSite would not claim that providing a safe injection site is an attempt to treat addictions. What InSite might claim is that providing a safe haven for drug users may create an atmosphere in which addiction may be treated. InSite certainly would claim that it is in the business of managing health risk. “InSite is attracting high risk users – those more likely to be vulnerable to HIV infection and overdose, and who were contributing to problems of public drug use and unsafe syringe disposal. (Drucker, 2006).
There is also an economic argument with respect to InSite, some people think that more money is being attributed to this that could be better attributed somewhere else (the idea that intravenous drug users shouldn’t be given any government money because they are addicts, and they shouldn’t be given medical care, because they throw it away to be intravenous drug users.) the reality is that if Insite was closed today, the cost of closing it would be so much more than operating it “The economic cost of closing InSite will far exceed the cost of operating it – by millions of dollars per year” (Drucker, 2006) there would be overdose deaths, hospitalizations for non-lethal overdoses, emergency medical visits for injection mishaps, bacterial infections, HIV/ AIDS infections, referrals to methadone treatment (Drucker, 2006). To date, five legal supervised injection sites have been opened in Canada; these sites are called “supervised drug consumption sites” as this terminology is easier for people to understand. (Zimonjic, 2017)
In my opinion, I believe InSite is a great idea.

I’ve been to Hasting’s street in Vancouver and I’ve seen the number of addicts on that street alone; there is a reason why it’s called the Worst Street in Canada (Wikipedia, n. d). I have the ideology that no matter what is going on in someone’s life that person wants to be validated and to be independent and to be treated with dignity. I don’t believe that InSite causes more people to become drug addicts, because I don’t believe people are glamourizing drug addiction. I believe the people using this are the hard-core users that need this help. Every article I’ve read has shown that this legal injection site has decreased the effects of drug paraphernalia, fatal overdoses, needle sharing and HIV within this population. I also don’t think that InSite would cause more people to relapse, because the relapse rates are already very high; I don’t believe InSite would make it higher. Drugs are already easy to find, InSite doesn’t provide you with drugs, so you’d have to make the conscious decision to go buy drugs before you would even consider InSite. InSite places value on human life; there have been no fatal overdoes within InSite. This would not be the case if these people chose to do drugs outside of InSite. I think this has opened my eyes to not believing everything you read, and taking other aspects into consideration. A legal drug site seems pretty crazy if you don’t have all the information to consider (that it reduces needle sharing, and HIV, and death) and when you do take all that information into account, it becomes apparent that this is needed in Canada. With all the journals dedicated to InSite, I didn’t find any facts on why InSite was bad, just

opinions.
To conclude, I would always vote in favor of human life; it doesn’t matter if you are mentally ill, addicted to drugs, or have developmental delays; everyone deserves dignity and respect. To offer severely marginalized groups a place to 1. Make networking connections with health providers they wouldn’t have access to or not feel comfortable enough to do themselves, and 2. A situation where they won’t have a fatal overdose. That is enough for me, with all the journal articles showing the benefits of clean streets, and HIV risk decreasing and not a single fatal overdose within Insite. I think Insite it the way of the future and will become commonplace in every major city centre.