Safe Injection Site Path Paved for Montréal’s Cactus

Québec•

Safe Injection Site Path Paved for Montréal’s Cactus

More : Cactus Montréal, Injection Drug Use, Insite, Supreme Court ruling

by 2B site Webmaster on October 5, 2011

The Supreme Court’s decision last week to allow Vancouver’s Insite to remain open means the Federal Government will no longer be able to outright deny exemptions to safe injection sites in other provinces. Enter Cactus, a Montréal org that has been in the process of opening their own for several years.

In a joint press release with Harm Reduction International and the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network on Friday, Cactus urged jurisdictions Canada-wide “to act fearlessly on evidence and make harm reduction services modelled on Insite available to those in need in their locales.

They further urged the Minister of Health to “respect the decision and grant similar exemption to other sites so that people across Canada will be able to access public health services they desperately need.”

Jean-François Mary, Communications Director at Montréal’s injection drug user service org Cactus, has been waiting for a response from the DSP since Nov 2010 on the results of a working work to establish a similar site here. In conjunction with Lise Chabot from the Provincial Agence de Santé, Cactus has been trying to open their own supervised injection site for years, knowing that getting an exemption from the Feds was only one of many obstacles. “We have a space, we just need to get the exemption and the support of the Direction de la Santé Publique to put our protocols in place.”

As for whether having an Insite at Cactus would help with the apparent public drug use problem in the Village and around Berri, Mary’s response is more nuanced. “The Centre-Sud area has actually gotten better for homelessness and crime. All reports, even from the SPVM show that the real crime rates (rates of arrests and charges) have been in decline for 10 years. Creating a centre like Insite in Montréal would diminish the public use of injection drugs, for sure.”

Initially the most adamant opponents to Cactus were local merchants and residents, the community worker says. “But now that they see us picking up syringes and working with people as a resource to help, we have support from the neighbourhood.” For Cactus, the use of injection drugs is worsened by strict criminalization and stigma, as well as poverty. Mary says there will be people from Cactus at the Queer McGill-led “anti-gentrification” demo on Friday, but as for him, he’ll be taking a break from a very busy few days of reacting to the Insite decision from the Supreme Court. 2Bmag will be following the Cactus plan to open a supervised injection site closely over the coming year.