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Canada’s highest court unchains injection drug users; implications for harm reduction as standard of healthcare

North America’s only supervised injection facility, Insite, opened its doors in September of 2003 with a federal exemption as a three-year scientific study. The results of the study, evaluated by an independent research team, showed it to be successful in engaging the target group in healthcare, pre...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autor principal: Small, Dan
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2012
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3492113/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22817679
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1477-7517-9-34
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author Small, Dan
author_facet Small, Dan
author_sort Small, Dan
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description North America’s only supervised injection facility, Insite, opened its doors in September of 2003 with a federal exemption as a three-year scientific study. The results of the study, evaluated by an independent research team, showed it to be successful in engaging the target group in healthcare, preventing overdose death and HIV infections while increasing uptake and retention in detox and treatment. The research, published in peer-reviewed medical and scientific journals, also showed that the program did not increase public disorder, crime or drug use. Despite the substantial evidence showing the effectiveness of the program, the future of Insite came under threat with the election of a conservative federal government in 2006. As a result, the PHS Community Services Society (PHS), the non-profit organization that operates Insite, launched a legal case to protect the program. On 30 September 2011, Supreme Court of Canada ruled in favour of Insite and underscored the rights of people with addictions to the security of their person under section 7 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms (Charter of Rights). The decision clears the ground for other jurisdictions in Canada, and perhaps North America, to implement supervised injection and harm reduction where it is epidemiologically indicated. The legal case validates the personhood of people with addictions while metaphorically unchaining them from the criminal justice system.
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spelling pubmed-34921132012-11-08 Canada’s highest court unchains injection drug users; implications for harm reduction as standard of healthcare Small, Dan Harm Reduct J Commentary North America’s only supervised injection facility, Insite, opened its doors in September of 2003 with a federal exemption as a three-year scientific study. The results of the study, evaluated by an independent research team, showed it to be successful in engaging the target group in healthcare, preventing overdose death and HIV infections while increasing uptake and retention in detox and treatment. The research, published in peer-reviewed medical and scientific journals, also showed that the program did not increase public disorder, crime or drug use. Despite the substantial evidence showing the effectiveness of the program, the future of Insite came under threat with the election of a conservative federal government in 2006. As a result, the PHS Community Services Society (PHS), the non-profit organization that operates Insite, launched a legal case to protect the program. On 30 September 2011, Supreme Court of Canada ruled in favour of Insite and underscored the rights of people with addictions to the security of their person under section 7 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms (Charter of Rights). The decision clears the ground for other jurisdictions in Canada, and perhaps North America, to implement supervised injection and harm reduction where it is epidemiologically indicated. The legal case validates the personhood of people with addictions while metaphorically unchaining them from the criminal justice system. BioMed Central 2012-07-20 /pmc/articles/PMC3492113/ /pubmed/22817679 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1477-7517-9-34 Text en Copyright ©2012 Small; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0 This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
spellingShingle Commentary
Small, Dan
Canada’s highest court unchains injection drug users; implications for harm reduction as standard of healthcare
title Canada’s highest court unchains injection drug users; implications for harm reduction as standard of healthcare
title_full Canada’s highest court unchains injection drug users; implications for harm reduction as standard of healthcare
title_fullStr Canada’s highest court unchains injection drug users; implications for harm reduction as standard of healthcare
title_full_unstemmed Canada’s highest court unchains injection drug users; implications for harm reduction as standard of healthcare
title_short Canada’s highest court unchains injection drug users; implications for harm reduction as standard of healthcare
title_sort canada’s highest court unchains injection drug users; implications for harm reduction as standard of healthcare
topic Commentary
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3492113/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22817679
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1477-7517-9-34
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