VICTORIA — British Columbia's top health official says Victoria should become Canada's second city to permit safe injection drug sites, even though the future of the first site is still up in the air. Vancouver has been operating its safe-injection drug site in the notorious downtown Eastside neighbourhood for almost five years on a trial basis. Now it's time to expand to Victoria, said Dr. Perry Kendall, B.C.'s provincial health officer. Kendall and Dr. Benedikt Fischer, of the University of Victoria's school of addictions research, are publishing a joint editorial in the B.C. Medical Journal on Tuesday calling for a second safe injection site in Victoria.

"The Health Act specifically states that if I am able, (I) must speak out on issues of policy or practice that I think affect the health of the population of British Columbia, and do it in any way that I think most appropriate," said Kendall.

"So, I think a journal editorial co-written with a drug policy researcher in a medical journal is an appropriate way of bringing the issue to attention."

Vancouver's safe-injection site, called Insite, allows addicts to inject their own heroin and cocaine under the supervision of a nurse. Studies published in medical journals such as the Lancet have suggested Insite, the only facility of its kind in North America, has reduced overdoses and blood-borne infections such as HIV because addicts are given clean needles.

Fischer and Kendall contend a supervised consumption drug site in Victoria will offer the city's 1,500 to 2,500 hard-drug users a location other than alleyways and open parking lots to inject drugs. And a second site in an urban environment smaller than Vancouver's will allow the federal government to further study the benefits of supervised drug sites, said Fischer.

Source: The Canadian Press