The Effect of Safe Injection Sites in Vancouver, British Columbia A safe injection site (SIS) has been placed in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside where drug use is a challenging problem. The program is a vital piece of the cities known harm reduction approach to its serious problems with homelessness, drugs, crime and AIDS. Canada has drastically shifted its method. Going from punishing drug users to establishing the plan of harm reduction. Since 2003 when the supervised SIS opened, it has presented a safe health-focused center where drug users have access to inject illegal drugs using sterile equipment in a clean environment under the supervision of medically trained professionals. Although there are some serious concerns about the
SISs could be viewed as encouraging a type of behavior that one does not approve of. But it has an even bigger form of encouragement on reducing the usage of these types of narcotics (Kerr el al,. 2006). There are multiple factors that have been found to be linked with drug usage in certain people. Some factors include syringe lending, requiring help with injecting and homelessness (McKnight et al., 2007). If SISs are able to help turn these types of issues then these kinds of services can help avoid future generations from making the wrong decision that would lead to drugs and point them in the direction of a more productive life.

Effect VS Cost
Insite works under a contract of Federal rules, which lets it provide as a research project. Since the program is having such a success, Canada would normally expand the facility elsewhere to provide similar services. Instead, there is a possibility that Insite may close down. If Insite were to close, it will cost Vancouver and British Columbia between $3.8 and $8.8 million in preventable health care expenses over the next two years. Focusing on the impact that Insite has made and that the decreased needle sharing is the only effect, a study showed that the facility had a net saving of almost $14 million and 920 life-years gained over ten years. When they also through the health effect of increased use of safe injection practice into the picture, the net savings increased to more then $20 million and the