Drug Injection Sites Are Not the Answer to Helping Addicts

A woman prepares to inject herself with an unknown substance as a man sits in a wheelchair outside Insite, the supervised drug consumption site in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside on Feb. 21, 2017. The Canadian Press/Darryl Dyck

Commentary

The bells tolling opioid deaths in Canada incessantly ring. They toll for the nearly 14,000 individuals who have died from opioid overdoses from January 2016 to June 2019. Part of the federal government’s response to this ongoing tragedy has been to authorize the establishment of even more supervised injection sites (SIS). This will not solve the problem.