Feds vow to review court's safe-injection site ruling

The Harper government will abide by a 9-0 Supreme Court decision upholding British Columbia's right to operate a supervised drug injection site, but Canada's health minister says it will review the ruling.

The court ordered the federal government to abandon its attempts to close the Insite facility in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside, saying they are convinced that the site is saving lives without increasing crime in the surrounding area.

"I'm ecstatic. Seven to eight people are alive every year because of that place," former Insite user Dean Wilson told CTV's Power Play.

Wilson was a heroin addict for 40 years.

"This is a neighborhood that's already suffered from years of addiction that needed intervention. It was a killing zone."

Health Minister Leona Aglukkaq said while her government is disappointed with the Supreme Court's decision, it will comply.

"We believe that the system should be focused on preventing people from becoming drug addicts. A key pillar of the national, anti-drug strategy is prevention and treatment for those with drug dependency," she told the House of Commons.

"We will be reviewing the court decision," she added.

The court's 9-0 ruling is considered a rebuke of the Harper government's tough-on-crime agenda.

When the ruling was announced, a crowd of social activists in Vancouver and Downtown Eastside residents burst into cheers and applause. The Canadian Medical Association also issued a tweet to say they were pleased with the decision.

Insite has been operating since 2003 through exemptions from federal drug laws that allow the site's clients to avoid facing drug possession charges.

The government had attempted to allow that exemption to lapse.

But in its ruling Friday, the Supreme Court said the government must continue to grant the site an exemption, agreeing that the experiment of Insite "has proven successful."

The top court stated in its ruling that "Insite has saved lives and improved health without increasing the incidence of drug use and crime in the surrounding area. It is supported by the Vancouver police, the city and provincial governments."

The court rejected the federal argument that the facility runs counter to its crime-fighting agenda.

"The potential denial of health services and the correlative increase risk of death and disease to injection drug users outweigh any benefit that might be derived from maintaining an absolute prohibition on possession of illegal drugs on Insite's premises," the justices wrote.

But they added that their ruling is "not a licence for injection drug users to possess drugs wherever and whenever they wish."

"Nor is it an invitation for anyone who so chooses to open a facility for drug use under the banner of a ‘safe injection facility,'" they said.

As many as 800 drug users a day visit Insite to use its 12 booths to inject drugs with clean needles. Clients are provided with health information, counselling, and referrals to various services, including an in-house detox and treatment centre.

"It took me three times to do it, and that's another good thing about (Insite), if you try and walk away they'll let you back in. I walked out straight the third time and I've been clean almost 22 months," Wilson said.

Opposition reaction

New Democratic Party deputy leader Libby Davies praised the decision on Friday, saying it would put an end to "years of Conservative interference."

Speaking in the House of Commons, she said the Harper government has an opportunity "to take off their ideological blinders and support a vital public service that has saved lives and given people hope."

She added that drug overdoses have dropped by more than a third in her Vancouver East riding since the clinic opened there in 2003.

Liberal MP Joyce Murray, who hails from the riding of Vancouver Quadra, asked Aglukkaq to clarify what she meant by saying the government would review the decision.

"Will the government respect the Supreme Court's decision and stop attacking Insite?" she demanded.

In response, Aglukkaq said the court ruling had only been handed down hours earlier and that the government will "do the due diligence and review the Supreme Court decision."

The ruling Conservatives have long opposed the facility, arguing it only encourages drug addiction.

"At the end of the day there's no such thing as safe injection. What you're looking at is a hard street drug that's being contaminated going into a human beings arm. Those drugs kill people," Colin Carrie, parliamentary secretary to the health minister, told Power Play.

The site's supporters point to a number of peer-reviewed studies that have found that Insite prevents overdose deaths, reduces the spread of disease, curbs crime, and curtails open drug use.

InSite's clinical co-ordinator, Tim Gauthier, said the clinic saves public money by preventing the spread of infectious diseases like HIV that can require expensive medical treatment.

"It's really cost effective," he told CTV News Channel on Friday. "You've got to spend a bit of money to save money."

Gauthier added that he hopes the Supreme Court's decision will help pave the way for an expansion of addiction services across the country.

NDP MP Olivia Chow said she hopes this will encourage similar initiatives in other cities.

"Let's just move ahead, work together so that more cities can benefit from this," she said.

"I hope that in Toronto, Ottawa -- places where there are some serious drug users -- that we could actually help treat them: get their lives around that corner and save their lives."

The federal government began the process to end Insite's exemption in 2006. It argued the fight against drug addiction would be better focused on prevention and treatment, as well as tougher laws to curb drug dealing.

Portland Hotel Society, the group that operates the site, filed suit in 2007 to keep the centre open, arguing its closure would be a violation of Insite users' rights, because without the site, they would be at risk of a fatal overdose.

"This group is a very hardcore drug user group. These people used to be in and out of hospital all the time with huge hospitalization rates, high rates of HIV, hepatitis C and of course death," said Hedy Fry, MP for Vancouver Centre who has been involved with the centre since the beginning.

"The bottom line is we wanted to save lives, decrease mortality and drop hospitalization rates."

The court sided with the Insite team. When the federal government appealed to the B.C. Court of Appeal, the decision was upheld. So in February, 2010, Ottawa appealed the ruling to the Supreme Court.