Insite Research Paper

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InSite: A Harm Reduction Program

Insite is the first legalized drug injection site in North American, it is located in Vancouver, Canada. Insite offers a safe place to inject or smoke illegal drugs, primarily heroin. Insite does not provide the drugs but they do offer medical help to anyone needing it. In 2009, 276,178 visits were recoded, and 484 overdoses occurred with no deaths, (Wikipedia, n. d).
There has been major controversy over Insite treatment, especially under the Harper government. There is controversy over the fact that a government – sanctioned institution is facilitating an illegal act. The effectiveness of InSite in deterring or treating addictions also has been challenged. (Stueck, 2011).
The value assumption for legal …show more content…

I’ve been to Hasting’s street in Vancouver and I’ve seen the number of addicts on that street alone; there is a reason why it’s called the Worst Street in Canada (Wikipedia, n. d). I have the ideology that no matter what is going on in someone’s life that person wants to be validated and to be independent and to be treated with dignity. I don’t believe that InSite causes more people to become drug addicts, because I don’t believe people are glamourizing drug addiction. I believe the people using this are the hard-core users that need this help. Every article I’ve read has shown that this legal injection site has decreased the effects of drug paraphernalia, fatal overdoses, needle sharing and HIV within this population. I also don’t think that InSite would cause more people to relapse, because the relapse rates are already very high; I don’t believe InSite would make it higher. Drugs are already easy to find, InSite doesn’t provide you with drugs, so you’d have to make the conscious decision to go buy drugs before you would even consider InSite. InSite places value on human life; there have been no fatal overdoes within InSite. This would not be the case if these people chose to do drugs outside of InSite. I think this has opened my eyes to not believing everything you read, and taking other aspects into consideration. A legal drug site seems pretty crazy if you don’t have all the information to consider (that it reduces needle sharing, and HIV, and death) and when you do take all that information into account, it becomes apparent that this is needed in Canada. With all the journals dedicated to InSite, I didn’t find any facts on why InSite was bad, just

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