Visit Insite's directory page for more information. Opened in July , the facility operates under a Health Canada exemption from prosecution under federal drug laws. Staff supervise and monitor clients for signs and symptoms of an overdose at five booths, teaching clients safer injection practices, and referring clients to other health care services such as substance use treatment and counselling.
Visit PSG's directory page for more information. Visit our Insite User Statistics page to find out how many clients we serve, how often they are referred to addiction treatment and social services, and see our operating budget. Insite , may facilitate tour requests from academic, research and related study programs.
InSite is a clean, safe, supervised environment where users can inject their own drugs off the streets, and connect to addiction, health care and community services. Learn more. See what they are saying: The Community.
Insite, Vancouver's supervised injection site, offers a solution to the negative health effects and public disorder caused by the open drug scene in the Downtown Eastside. Supervised injection sites are safe, health-focused places where people can inject drugs under the care of medical professionals. Vancouver Coastal Health offers needle exchange services where people can dispose of used needles in a safe and legal way.
They also provide clean needles, sterile water, alcohol wipes and health information to encourage safer injecting practices.
People may come in multiple times a day to inject drugs. In addition to a safe, clean place to get high, users come to avoid getting sick from withdrawal. People also give a code name — Peaches, Mischief, or Misfit, for example. That anonymity and minimal paperwork is all by design, says Fisher. The less bureaucratic the better. The point is to make people comfortable, so they want to come inside.
That way everyone can focus on developing relationships. Beyond the front waiting area is the main room, the inner sanctum for supervised injection. People get called back one by one as booths open up. In the middle is a long table where people can get clean injection supplies like sterile water and needles.
Next to the main injection space is a private room for health visits and wound care. Peers — people who use drugs themselves — work there. Other staff and counselors are on hand too. Fisher says this is often where conversations about the other needs — housing, mental health — come up. Once Insite opens, music playing out of speakers and a low hum of conversation fills the room. Injection can take 5 minutes or as long as 25 minutes.
Gauthier says unless someone is experiencing other health problems, he rarely has to call for paramedics. When a drug user overdoses, staffers offer a quick, choreographed response. He and others are well versed in responding to people who become unresponsive. From there, the responder applies firm pressure to the shoulders, and then gently tips someone back on the floor. Rescue breaths are next. Someone brings out the oxygen tank and naloxone.
The goal, Gauthier says, is to be as gentle as possible. When the Canadian government approved the opening of Insite as a pilot, exempting it from federal drug laws, it mandated rigorous evaluation. At that time, researchers at the B.
That experience meant researchers had a baseline group to study, once Insite opened. When the Canadian government approved the opening of Insite as a pilot, that move exempted the program from federal drug laws. Canada also mandated rigorous evaluation. Researchers had an advantage going in: they had already been following hundreds of active drug users in Vancouver. That gave them a baseline group to study once Insite opened.
M-J Milloy with the British Columbia Centre on Substance Use, says the benefits of supervised injection in Vancouver became clear to him and others leading the evaluations. They found a decline in rates of fatal overdoses around the facility and dozens of deaths averted annually.
People were less likely to share needles, Milloy says. And drug users were more likely to enter a detox program and enroll in longer term recovery services. After 15 years, Insite has gained widespread support in the region. That story begins back in the s. Vancouver was in the midst of an overdose and HIV crisis. Overdose deaths shot up from a couple dozen to more than a year in the province, partly from a more potent supply of heroin. Ann Livingston, who has lived in the neighborhood for decades, remembers the neglect, the trauma, the loss.
Livingston was one of the major forces behind organizing a drug user union. They first met in a nearby park, then landed their own space, where they even ran an illegal injection site that police would often close down.
People like Bryan Alleyne, who was an active drug user, started taking the lead. Alleyne has been working at Insite as a peer since it opened 15 years ago. Union members took over city hall meetings , demanding more attention and support, for basics including medical care.
They wanted an alternative to shooting up in alleys, with dirty water and used needles. They also wanted a space where they could safely inject, free from harassment. Leaders of a non-profit housing group called The Portland Hotel Society, where many people who used drugs lived, also headed that push, and the campaign to educate surrounding communities.
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