Vancouver’s safer injection services stalled as overdose death toll mounts
The struggle for safer injection services continues against the backdrop of another deadly crisis of fatalities and injuries related to opioid overdose
The Globe and Mail (Canada)
Friday, September 30, 2016
Friday, September 30, 2016
On Sept. 30, 2011, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled in favour of Vancouver’s Insite, North America’s first legally authorized safer injection site. It was the culmination of a years-long struggle to open – and then keep open – one health facility that could help address the crisis of HIV and of overdose deaths among people injecting drugs. In response, the then-government flouted the ruling by passing an egregious new bill to create multiple bureaucratic barriers to getting a ministerial exemption to operate such services. The result is that in 2016 it is harder than ever to legally establish such services.
tags:
