Insite saves

Re: “Vancouver’s easy drug access may have helped kill Monteith,” Licia Corbella, Opinion, July 19.

Licia Corbella’s column sets a new standard in the realm of absurd arguments to undermine supervised injection sites like Vancouver’s Insite. It is especially shocking in the aftermath of Monteith’s tragic overdose death.

Corbella’s reference to her own addiction to “double crunch sushi” is offensive in the face of the hundreds of people who have died or been hospitalized from drug overdoses in Alberta and B.C. over the past 10 years. It displays a stunning lack of understanding of the plight of people who use drugs and the loss so many experience — their families, friends and colleagues.

To use Monteith’s tragic death as an opportunity to undermine a valuable health service that responds to overdoses by preventing them is abhorrent. Injection sites first opened in Switzerland over 25 years ago as part of a comprehensive response to problematic drug use, HIV and drug overdose. They have been replicated in many European countries, Australia and Canada. There has not been one overdose death recorded in the 70-plus injection rooms globally. The irony is, had Monteith used Insite, the evidence suggests he would have lived. Corbella has it backwards — supervised injection sites save lives. Period. Donald MacPherson, Vancouver

Donald MacPherson is director of the Canadian Drug Policy Coalition at Simon Fraser

University.