Harm reduction more effective than war on drugs in B.C.

Harm reduction more effective than war on drugs in B.C.

15-year study finds fewer people using, injecting illicit drugs

The Canadian Press 
Posted: Jun 24, 2013 7:59 PM ET

Harm reduction — not a war on drugs — has reduced illicit drug use and improved public safety in what was once Ground Zero for an HIV and overdose epidemic that cost many lives, says a 15-year study of drug use in Vancouver's impoverished Downtown Eastside. 

The report by the B.C. Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS found that from 1996 to 2011, fewer people were using drugs and, of those who were, fewer were injecting drugs, said Dr. Thomas Kerr, co-author of the report and co-director of the centre's Urban Health Research Initiative. 

"A public health emergency was declared here because we saw the highest rates of HIV infection ever seen outside of sub-Saharan Africa — in this community. At the same time, the community was being levelled by an overdose epidemic," Kerr said after presenting his findings to members of the group affected at a community centre in the heart of the neighbourhood. 

Vancouver took a public health approach to the crisis, opening the country's first supervised injection site in 2003, and Kerr said the statistics show that approach was successful. 

There were fewer people sharing needles in 2011, and there were fewer new infections of HIV and Hepatitis C related to sharing needles, the study found....

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