The CBC's premier investigative program, The Fifth Estate was allowed to film a documentary at Insite, the safe injection site in Vancouver's poverty-ridden lower east side.
It is a compassionate examination of the facility, its staff and the lives of three regular patrons. They made an interesting (and commendable) choice not to interview any experts, pundits or politicians for this program (other than 2 employees of the site). I highly recommend watching, including the extra interviews of the five main subjects.
It isn't a rosy picture, as the three patrons are each shown injecting drugs. One of the three, Shelly Tomic, had been off heroin for three years (but on methadone) and falls off the wagon when she has difficulty obtaining methadone, despite having a prescription. Shelly's case is particularly tragic as she is actually a named plaintiff in the lawsuit which resulted in a court ruling allowing the site to remain open.
More hopefully, Taz Prouting is admitted to the facility's detox program "Onsite" and on her third attempt, makes it through the very painful 11 day period it takes to get through withdrawal. Will she succeed in staying clean? What comes through is the value of the site in at least providing a way out for the most destitute and abandoned members of society. It easily cuts through any nonsense idea that sites like this would encourage drug abuse, as no one who wasn't already an addict could possibly walk into that facility and say "I think I'd like to try this!" An opium den this is not. For some background on the facility from my post last year about it, go here. Also, I'd recommend today's Greenwald who is discussing Portugal's experiment with decriminalization.
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