Vancouver Coastal Health will consider adding supervised drug injection services to existing health clinics, if Health Canada grants an exemption to a downtown facility that has “illegally” operated an injection room for its registered clients since February 2002.
Dr. Patricia Daly, the chief medical health officer for Vancouver Coastal Health, said the health authority is still waiting for Health Canada’s decision on the Dr. Peter Centre before it looks to expand injection services in the city.
The centre operates a three-booth injection room and allows for supervised injection in its residential care facility at Comox and Thurlow. It caters to people with AIDS and those dealing with mental health and addictions issues.
“I’ve been disappointed at how long it’s taken,” Daly told the Courier. “We had hoped that if Health Canada approves that different type of model [at the centre], we could then expand that to other sites. We want that model elsewhere.”
Daly wouldn’t speculate on how many sites but pointed to existing community health clinics, which already provide needle exchanges, as likely locations. The concern for staff at health clinics is that drug users continue to inject drugs outside a facility without supervision, she said.
“They’re worried because they know some of these vulnerable residents might be injecting drugs and might overdose, and what are they going to do if that happens?” Daly said.
Vancouver Coastal Health announced last week that Health Canada renewed an exemption for the Insite supervised drug injection site on East Hastings to operate for another year.
But unlike Insite, the Dr. Peter Centre has never received an exemption in the 13 years it has operated its injection services and is considered “illegal” by Health Canada, although the Vancouver Police Department has consistently said it has no plans to shut it down.
Staff at the centre consulted the College of Registered Nurses and a lawyer before offering the injection service in 2002.
Vancouver Coastal Health, on behalf of the centre, applied to Health Canada in 2002 for the exemption and included it in the application for Insite, which opened in 2003. To this day, it still isn’t clear why the centre didn’t get an exemption. Health Canada declined to give a reason.
The health authority’s latest request for an exemption came in February 2014. It was made before the Harper government, which has battled unsuccessfully in the courts to shut down Insite, passed new legislation to make it more difficult, if not impossible, for an applicant to get a site open in Canada.
Last week, the federal Conservatives passed the Respect for Communities Act, which sets out a detailed list of criteria an applicant must meet to open an injection site. Criteria includes providing information outlining the views of police, municipal leaders, public health officials and provincial health ministers.
The more onerous task of the applicant is to show the proposed injection site’s expected impact on crime rates and supply documentation on treatment options for drug users. The Act also requests the public health reasons for needing such a site and evidence there are resources to sustain the facility’s operations.
“If there are businesses or people opposed to Insite and they submit a letter, that alone could be enough for the [federal] minister of health to deny the application,” Daly said.
Donald Macpherson, the city’s former drug policy coordinator, said he is aware of the health authority’s wish to expand drug injection services to health clinics.
But Macpherson, who is now the director of the Canadian Drug Policy Coalition, said any new injection sites or services should be set up to handle high volumes of drug users.
“If you put them in very low volume community clinics that actually can’t handle a high volume of street-involved drug users, that’s a problem,” he said.
But as Daly said, the health authority’s decision to expand injection services is dpeendent on what Health Canada decides regarding the Dr. Peter Centre’s application for an exemption.
Health Canada has not told her when to expect a decision, although it requested more information on the application as recently as last week.
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