InSite: The Role of North America's First Supervised Injection Facility in Transforming the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver

While numerous studies on InSite (North America’s first and only supervised injection facility (SIF)) have been published in leading international journals, little attention has been given to the potential role that InSite has played in transforming the landscape and culture of drug use in the Downtown Eastside (DTES) of Vancouver, British Columbia (BC). The present research was conducted on the premise of assessing the transformative role of InSite in the lives of injection drug users (IDUs) who are caught in a vicious cycle of substance abuse, poverty and homelessness. Semi-structured qualitative interviews were conducted with a purposively chosen sample of IDUs in Vancouver, Surrey, and Victoria, BC. Audio recorded interviews were transcribed verbatim and analyzed thematically using NVivo 8 software. Findings suggest attending InSite has numerous positive effects on the lives of IDUs. Furthermore, attending InSite has contributed to landscape and drug use transformation in the DTES. There is also an urgent need to expand the current facility to cities where injection drug use is prevalent.

Ehsan is a PhD student at the school of Criminology at Simon Fraser University. His research interests are harm reduction, drug policy, evaluation and research methods.