User:Oceanflynn/sandbox/A timeline of events related to supervised injection sites (Canada)

A timeline of events related to supervised injection sites (SIS)s in Canada, includes content that contextualizes the use of these sites worldwide.

• 1994 British Columbia was experiencing a "provincial overdose crisis". In response, a task group established by the Provincial Chief Coroner of British Columbia, published the Cain Report. The authors recommended that "Vancouver explore SIFs given the experience with these facilities in Europe."

• 1995 "In response to epidemics of HIV infection and overdose in Vancouver, a range of actors advocated for the creation of supervised injection facilities (SIFs)."

• 1996 The Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) became operational in 1996.

• 1997 A public health emergency was declared in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside (DTES) by Vancouver's chief medical officer.

• September 1997 Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users (VANDU), which was established in 1998, was first considered at Oppenheimer Park when a community Harm reduction activist activist, Ann Livingston, invited the public to a community approach to issues related to addictions.

• 1998 The worst year on record for overdoses in British Columbia was 1998, when 417 people died by drug overdose, with the majority of deaths concentrated in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside (DTES)—an area covering about six square kilometers that is "Canada's poorest postal code" and "home to "a large, open drug scene."

• 2000–2001 The City of Vancouver released its Four Pillar Drug Strategy, based on Western European policy models. The four pillars included "prevention, enforcement, treatment, and harm reduction" and called for for two safe injection facilities (SIF)s.

• 2003 the Portland Hotel Society (PHS), opened a SIF within a "seemingly vacant building." Soon after, the PHS announced that it had been built.

• 2003 Insite, the first legal supervised injection site in North America, was opened at 139 East Hastings Street, in the Downtown Eastside (DTES) neighbourhood of Vancouver, British Columbia. as a three-year pilot project. Insite had a "federal exemption permitting illegal drug use." Observations before and after the opening of the Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada Insite facility indicated a reduction in public injecting. "Self-reports" of INSITE users and "informal observations" at INSITE, Sydney and some European SISs suggest that SISs "can reduce rates of public self-injection."

• 2005 The death rate from AIDS epidemic reached its peak in 2005 when globally, 1.9 million people died from HIV/AIDS.

• 2005 In response to the HIV/AIDS epidemic, the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation commissioned the Institute of Medicine (IoM), now know as the National Academy of Medicine (NAM), to evaluate strategies for preventing HIV transmission among injecting drug users.

• September 15, 2006 In the United States, Institute of Medicine submitted their report, "Preventing HIV infection among injecting drug users in high-risk countries an assessment of the evidence".

• February 6, 2006 The newly Conservative government, under then Prime Minister Stephen Harper, was "publicly vocal in its opposition to harm reduction and Insite in particular." The Conservative party remained in power until 2015. During that time the federal government, opposed the operation of SISs.

• March 31, 2008 Health Canada published the Final report of the Expert Advisory Committee on Vancouver's INSITE service and other supervised injection sites. The cost of running Insite per annum, at that time, was $3 million Canadian. Mathematical modeling showed cost to benefit ratios of one dollar spent ranging from 1.5 to 4.02 in benefit. However, the Expert Advisory Committee expressed reservation about the certainty of Insite’s cost effectiveness until proper longitudinal studies had been undertaken. Mathematical models for HIV transmissions foregone had not been locally validated and mathematical modeling from lives saved by the facility had not been validated.

• June 2, 2008 Then-Federal Health Minister in Harper's administration, Tony Clements, has stated that the money for Insite would be better spent on treatment for clients.

• 2010 Vancouver's Insite was the only SIS in North America.

• 2010 By 2010, there were "92 supervised injection facilities (SIF) in 61 cities worldwide."

• 2011 In AG v PHS Community Services Society, the Supreme Court of Canada "justices ruled 9–0 in favor of the continued operation of Insite and in their decision." They ruled that, "The Minister’s failure to grant [an exemption] to Insite ... contravened the principles of fundamental justice ... Insite has been proven to save lives with no discernable negative impact on the public safety and health objectives of Canada..." The Conservative federal government "defied the spirit of the Supreme Court of Canada ruling by passing new legislation that erected considerable barriers to their expansion, including the requirement of approval by local police."

• 2015 The Prime Minister Stephen Harper promised to continue fighting against the expansion of safe injection sites. Harper said that the "data are very mixed ... and that this was going to bring drugs into communities if they allow these sites." University of British Columbia professor, Benjamin Perrin, who was was a criminal justice adviser working for Harper's Conservative government from 2012 to 2013, said that he now believes that SIS saves lives. Perrin's book, Overdose: Heartbreak and Hope in Canada's Opioid Crisis will be available in March 2020.

• May 2017 National Post's journalist Tristin Hoper commented that Vancouver has been dealing with injection drug using addicts for about 20 years and he posited that "The city has been concentrating more and more services in its Downtown Eastside. The result? Everything seems to be getting worse." He cited that homeless has increased to 2,138 in 2017 from 1,364 in 2005 and with regards to opioid crisis "Vancouver is its undisputed epicentre ".

• 2016 In response to the opioid crisis in the province of Alberta, the Alberta Health Services's (AHS), Alberta Health, Alberta Health Services, Indigenous Relations, Justice and Solicitor General including the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, and the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Alberta met to discuss potential solutions.

• November 30, 2016 The Alberta Health report that resulted from that meeting, the introduction of supervised consumption services, along with numerous other responses to the crisis, was listed as a viable solution. The 2016 Alberta Health report stated that, SIS, "reduce overdose deaths, improve access to medical and social supports, and are not found to increase drug use and criminal activity."

• October 2017 Safeworks Supervised Consumption Services (SCS) or SCSS, located at the at the Sheldon M. Chumir Health Centre, which operated for several months, as a temporary facility, became fully operational starting April 30th, 2018 with services available 24 hours, 7 days a week.

• February 28, 2018 In response to the mounting death toll of drug overdose in Lethbridge, the city opened its first SCS, operated by ARCHES, at 1016 1 Avenue South on February 28, 2018.

• February 2019 There has been a plan for mobile safe consumption site intending to operate in the Forest Lawn, Calgary, Alberta, however in response to the statistics at the permanent site at the Sheldon M. Chumir Centre, community leaders have withdrawn their support.

• March 31, 2019 From the day it initially launched in October 30, 2017 to March 31, 2019, 71,096 people had used its services Safeworks staff had "responded to a total of 954 overdoses." In one month alone, "848 unique individuals" had made 5,613 visits to the Safeworks SCS. The Safeworks program is monitored by the Province of Albert in partnership with the Institute of Health Economics.

• May 2019 According to a May 2019 Calgary Herald article, the 250 meter radius around the safe consumption site Safeworks in Calgary located within the Sheldon M. Chumir Centre has seen a major spike in crime since its opening and described in a report by the police as having become "ground zero for drug, violent and property crimes in the downtown." Within this zone, statistics by the police in 2018 showed a call volume increase to the police by 276% for drug related matters 29% overall increase relative to the three-year average statistics. A May 2019 opinion piece in the Herald, said that Health Canada announced in February 2019 of approval for Siteworks to operate for another year, conditional to addressing neighborhood safety issues, drug debris and public disorder.

• September 2019 By September 2019, the number of people suffering from opioid overdose seeking treatment at Safeworks, spiked. Safeworks staff were overwhelmed and 13.5% of their staff took psychological leave.

• January 2020 The City of Lethbridge commissioned a report that included an Urban Social Issues Study (USIS) which examined unintended consequences of the SIS site in Lethbridge. The research found that in smaller cities, such as Lethbridge, the increased social disorder in neighborhoods wit SCS, may be more noticeable. The report's author, University of Lethbridge's Em M. Pijl, said that the news media tended to the "personal experiences of business owners and residents who work and/or live near an SCS", which contrasts with "scholarly literature that demonstrates a lack of negative neighbourhood impacts related to SCSs."A 102-page report, commissioned by the City of Lethbridge noted that "Calgary’s Sheldon Chumir SCS has received considerable negative press about the "rampant" social disorder around the SCS, a neighbourhood that is mixed residential and commercial."

• 2020 According to January 2020 Edmonton Journal editorial, by 2020 Alberta had seven SIS with a "100-per-cent success rate at reversing the more than 4,300 overdoses" that occurred from November 2017—when the first SIS opened in the province—until August 2019.