Anyone here ever walked past or near the one in Downtown Eastside of Vancouver?

Wooo-hooo, Mad Max meets Star Wars bar.

So yeah, just put in Madison Park, next to the Starbucks that Howard Schultz sometimes frequents.

@1: You ever walk through that area before InSite opened in 2003? Similar, but with more deaths. So, yeah, put it somewhere near where people are dying of overdoses.

@4: oh batcrap. There is no goddamn Conde Nast for drug users or the homeless. People do not relocate for services. Downtown Eastside is the poorest postal code in Canada; nobody in their right mind is moving there. We hear the same crap in Seattle "oh people come here because we have great services" while studiously ignoring the fact that cities all over are seeing an explosion in homelessness and drug use. And west coast cities in particular.

If you're measuring the success of Insite by how many people enter and complete drug treatment, you're using probably the least relevant measure I can think of. How about just start with money saved? I'm guessing most tax payers care a lot more about that than lives saved. Or injections now taking place indoors and out of sight rather than in doorways and loading docks of apartment buildings and businesses?

@4: David, where did you read about people migrating to Vancouver because of InSite? The studies I'm looking at don't seem to indicate that, and they found that InSite reduced, not increased, costs to the public--by $6 million per year. They also found that InSite's opening "was associated independently with a 30% increase in detoxification service use, and this behavior was associated with increased rates of long-term addiction treatment initiation and reduced injecting" there.

We already do syringe-exchange here, and we know that it works. This is the next logical step. Instead of handing people a clean syringe and leaving them to go use it in an alley or a public restroom, we'll provide a place that is safer for them and is not one of the many places they would otherwise use that we probably all agree are inappropriate. And we'll be far more likely able to put people in touch with those who can help if and when they want help. In other places where people have tried this, it is saving lives, reducing harm to those who use drugs, reducing harm to the surrounding communities, and reducing costs to the public both in terms of human life and of money.

Who the Hell does Sally Bagshaw think she is?She represents the district Belltown is in,but not Lake City.She has no business in other districts.The day I see or hear of one being built,that will be the day protests start.

I assumed it would go in the South End ... that's where the least stink will be raised.
Shorter Queen Anne residents: I pay too much money to have to deal with societal problems. Send them to Rainier Valley!

@8: Whose neighborhood does not already have the "hordes of addicts" about which you expressed concern, and if such a place exists, what makes you think anyone in his or her right mind would want to put a supervised consumption facility there?

If a SCF ends up in an area that does not already have a significant number of people with substance use disorder, it will be in the wrong place. I have seen nobody calling for locating these in places where there is no need for them.

I really don't care if someone needs or wants to check out and I don't even mind giving them a space to do so-- but when they are teetering on the edge of *really* checking out (and finally do), I still really don't care. Can someone please help me understand what the point of administering narcan is?!