Two completely opposite sides of the same coin

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Two completely opposite sides of the same coin

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uploaded by Pina29

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  uploaded by Pina29 | add comment

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  uploaded by Pina29 | add comment

One of these pictures is of Insite, Vancouver's safe Injection site opened in 2003 and located in the poorest and most drug ridden 10 block area in North America.

The other is a picture of a man, just one block over, passed out from shooting up god knows what in the doorway of an abandoned building. He was surrounded by the paraphernalia of the typical junkie, clean water vials, empty syringe packages, and just peeking out from under him, his stash. I wanted to move it further under him, knowing that if I could see it, someone else would, and when he woke up, sick and jonesing, what little he had saved would be gone.

I didn't dare.

I took both of these pictures, on different days, but the underlying message in both is more similar than it it diferent.

Since its opening, Insite has been a thorn in the side of the city of Vancouver, with fighting between those that would have it shut down, those who claim it is reducing the spread of HIV and hepatitis, those who imply that it is nothing but a place for addicts to get free drugs, and fix.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper has threatened to close it down. Several short stays of execution have been issued by Ottawa. The debate rages on in Parliament, in the Provincial Legislature, and in city council meetings.

World famous Doctors both in the fields of addiction and the prevention of the spread of HIV and hepatitis have weighed in.

Former Mayor and ex RCMP Member Larry Campbell supports Insite.

So does current Mayor Sam Sullivan.

As do those learned men and women that work with the Center for HIV Excellence.

The BC Supreme Court ruled that the current laws that would bring about the closing of Insite are unconstitutional under section 7 of the Canadian Charter of Rights.

And here are the medical facts:

Dr Ernest Drucker, a public health researcher and Professor of Epidemiology and Social Medicine, and Professor of Psychiatry at Montefiore Medical Center/Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York City published a report after completing a study which was published in the Harm Reduction Journal.

His study found of the 453 overdoses at Insite, none resulted in death and few required hospital care. The study does not deal with the cost of more people becoming infected with HIV, and the AIDS epidemic spreading even further, Dr. Perry Kendall, B.C.'s Medical Health Officer points out.

 There  is an estimated cost savings of $5 million to $8 million doesn't include the impact and social costs of drug users being back on the street without Insite's care.

The report claims without Insite that there would have been over 2,000 emergency medical visits for injection mishaps, and the treatment of infections associated with unsafe injecting. About I00 of these 2,000 emergency room patients would have been hospitalized in acute care beds for 15 to 20 days. 100 fewer people would have been referred to Methadone treatment.

It seems to me that the people who seem to have the most negative reaction to keeping Insite open are those that neither live anywhere near the Downtown East Side and have no idea that in spite of a safe injection site, people are still dying in alleys and flophouses.

They may have no emotional connection to the problems faced by those of us that live or work or must travel through the hell on earth that is the Downtown East Side.

Granted, Insite is supposed to be a part of the four pillars treatment program which includes prevention, treatment, harm reduction and enforcement.

In many of these, the city has fallen short. There are not  enough adequate treatment and detox programmes available. There is little or no affordable housing for those that want to get out of that life. We are incarcerating addicts just long enough to detox them and sending them right back out to the only place they know.

The Government of BC just handed out $440 million dollars as a carbon tax refund.

How many programmes could be funded with that? How many treatment beds,  or low income housing units? How much of that could have been given to Insite to aid in its initial goal- to get people off of drugs and into succesful treatment so that they are no longer in need of the services of a place like Insite?

But by closing Insite, they are effectively shutting the door on the opportunity to  even attempt make  this portion of the four pillars program work.

 To Me that is as tragic as the man laying in that doorway slowly dying.