Senator wants Sandy Hill supervised injection site to offer drug replacement therapy

Conservative Senator Vernon White wantssupervised injectionsites, like the one planned forSandy Hill,to offer drug replacement therapy to drug users.

The former Ottawa police chief believes offering drug users a pharmaceuticalalternative to dangerous street drugs will keep themsafer and reduce organized crime.

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"I certainly do not support a supervised consumption site that supports organized crime, street vendors and illegaldrugs going into thehands of addicts," he said.

"It just doesn't make sense to me."

Give methadone, dilaudid instead

Earlier this year, Whiteintroduced an amendment to BillC-37that would have required doctors at supervised injection sites to offer substitute pharmaceuticals to drug users. The Liberalsrejected it.

White said supervised injection sites will not deter drug users from buying illegal drugs and committing crimes to support their habits unless they are offered a safer alternative.

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"They're going to be committing crimes near that facility and the people in Sandy Hill are going to be the victims of that crime. The better answer is to provide replacement drug therapy," he said.

"A methadone clinic is a supervised consumption site. It's a location where people go and useopioidslegally. We have half a dozen of thosein the city now and nobodyknows about them because there's no criminal activity attached to it," said White.

"Italready is a supervisedconsumptionsite of only oneopioid. My argument is, provide other options. In some cases it might bedilaudid. In some cases it might be some of the drugs that are being used in Switzerland very successfully."

On Wednesday, Health Canada gave the Sandy Hill Community Health Centre the green light to build a supervised injectionsite at its Nelson Street headquarters.

Thecommunity centre has proposed a facility that would providesupervised injections to between 80 and 150 people per day.