Experts call for safe drug-injection site in Victoria

VICTORIA - B.C.'s provincial health officer and a prominent drug expert are renewing calls for a supervised injection site in the city of Victoria, where addicts can more safely inject and consume drugs.

"More so than ever before, it's probably time for concrete decisions and action on whether we want to take the step forward to at least try to make this happen," University of Victoria addictions researcher Benedikt Fischer said in an interview. "Every day that passes you have 2,000 people doing very unhealthy things to themselves and the community."

Fischer and B.C. Provincial Health Officer Dr. Perry Kendall will make their argument in a B.C. Medical Journal editorial to be published Tuesday. Former Vancouver police chief Jamie Graham will write an accompanying editorial from an enforcement point of view.

Last April, Fischer co-authored a feasibility study, commissioned by the city and the Vancouver Island Health Authority, that recommended a few supervised drug consumption sites around the city. The recommendation was supported by B.C. Health Minister George Abbott, the Victoria Police Department and others.

Victoria Mayor Alan Lowe championed the report and said the city would apply to Health Canada for an exemption to federal drug laws to operate the sites as a research project. The application, however, was never made.

The mayor said the issue is now in the hands of the health authority. The health authority's president, Howard Waldner, said it is following through, but that the board has asked for more information before it can make a decision.