Re: “Safe-injection sites are not cause for alarm” (Opinion, Sept. 2)
Once more, enthusiasm gets the better of truth.
The term safe-injection site promises a lot, but even those that are front-line workers in addiction treatment do not use the word “safe.” Quai 9, which Jennifer Laura Lee praises, is in fact referred to as a risk-reduction site. Insite in Vancouver labels itself a supervised-injection site. The supervision of injection makes it safer, but does not entirely eliminate the risks such as endocarditis and, in the case of cocaine, myocardial infarction, to name two serious events.
As to the reduction of transmittable diseases, unfortunately, by the time IV drug abusers start using these sites they are often already infected (80 per cent of hepatitis C is contracted within the first year of IV drug use.
Lee’s enthusiasm is nonetheless understandable and, after 25 years working as a board-certified addiction physician, I for one support the opening of these sites. But it is a disservice to call what are essentially high-tech opium dens “safe.”
Charles Mackay, St-Eustache
