Many people in Vancouver are in need of drug addiction support

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by Change | 5 Mar 2010

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Up to 800 people in need of drug addiction help attend a safe injection facility every day.

Hundreds of people in need of drug addiction support in Vancouver attend a safe injection facility every day.

According to the Calgary Herald, as many as 800 people visit the city's Insite centre either to access clean needles or to inject themselves in a clean environment under the supervision of nurses.

Citing a documentary by Corey Ogilvie, the newspaper's Susan Martinuk believes that the problem with Insite is that "no-one wants to be the bad guy" by agreeing that drug injection is a harmful thing.

She was recently invited on a tour of the facility and said that she was "very impressed" by the staff's sincerity and concern.

"Yet I came away thinking that Insite's main gauge of success is engagement, not treating addiction, reducing numbers of addicts or providing addicts with a way out," she wrote in the newspaper.

She went on to say that the facility is able to make Vancouver's substance abusers feel better about their behaviour, but that its philosophy does not deal with drug addiction intervention.

The BBC reported last month that the Canadian city is continuing to struggle with a "vicious drugs war", with the Downtown Eastside area among the trouble hotspots.

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