Insite Battles Ottawa - and Wins
An appeal made by Canada's Attorney General and the Minister of Health on a ruling about Insite - Vancouver's supervised drug injection site - has been struckdown in a BC courtroom.
The victory puts health care into the jurisdiction of the provinces, limiting interference from Ottawa. Stephen Harper's Conservative Government has been a strong opponent of Insite, but will now have to allow provinces to independently regulate these types of health care centers.
The ruling is promising for Montreal, Toronto, and Victoria - cities that have shown interest in adopting the Insite model.
The Federal Government is reviewing the decision and may take the issue to the Supreme Court. Critics are calling on the government to abide by the ruling and not waste more taxpayer's money fighting a medically supported treatment.
Read more at thetyee.ca
or at the nationalpost.com
They should be supportive of Insight. At least it is somewhere SAFE that addicts can go to do their drugs. If done right you can slowly ween them off the drug. I want Calgary to have something like this, today alone I saw 3 needles on the ground because construction has removed the needle drop boxes so they can start building another train line. I may not like heroin addicts, but at least if they are going to do the drug they should be safe and smart about it. If there is a safe injection place then they can go there, get new clean needles, and even have a nurse do it for them so it is done in the safest manner possible.
I think I should add, Calgary has NO methadone clinics because they closed the downtown one so they could tear the building down and build condos and all the other locations were in family dominated neighbourhoods and the residents didn't want it around their kids, that is, in a sense understandable, but without them accepting even a temporary location, now there are NO methadone clinics. I spoke to one guy who said because the clinics got shut down, he relapsed... he was on the lowest dosage and nearly clean off heroin. People need to stop ignoring the hardcore addicts and start ignoring the pot heads. I have NEVER seen pot ruin someones life the way I've seen crack, coke, meth, and heroin ruin someones life.
Well said.
Excellent. I was reading about this the other day in the newspaper. I was like 'YES!!!!'. Fucking about time. Gotta love the struggle of retards fighting against knowledge though.