Subsidize drug use? You're kidding. That gives children growing up an easy out. If the state legitimizes and subsidizes it, children/youth will think it's okay. They see it on the streets so it becomes normal. The last thing anyone needs is to see drug use normalized. During a tough time in a teen's life, they might know exactly where to go to find drug users to hang out with. I think Canadians have a 51st state complex, and try to do the opposite of what they think Americans would do to prove that they're a completely uniqie country. So they turn around and immitate Europeans instead, to prove that they're are more sophisticated than us back woods Americans. It is a position of haughty disdain for the lower 48. Europeans are no role models. Europe would cease to exist tomorrow if it were not for the protection of Americans that they so dispise. Do what's best for yourself. Normalizing drug use couldn't possibly be good.

see why incarcerating addicts is expensive and unhelpful. However, what I have read about here (and seen for myself) and seen in Vancouver about addicts on the street is appalling. Frankly, I have a hard time having too much sympathy for these wasted individuals. In a civilized society, people need to cooperate to share the public space successfully. Shooting up, lying in a gutter, breaking into cars and homes, leaving needles around, etc. is a huge violation of other people's rights to a decent life. It is disgusting, and these addicts are disgusting to do it. So many people in this world who could thrive and live good lives die of hunger and disease, while these addicts make disease, death and trouble for themselves and others, sucking down the world's precious resources to feed their own hunger. It truly is sickening.

I am a native Vancouverite and I have both lived and worked on the Downtown Eastside at various times in my life. I still visit many friends who have chosen to stay and raise their families near Main and Hastings when they might easily live somewhere else in the city. It is a vibrant community with a lot of good points as well as severe problems, as tough as this is to believe. It is also fairly safe. Sure, if you park on the street, your car probably will get broken into and B&Es are common but chances are you won't get shot during an armed mugging. These are still comparatively rare in Vancouver.

Visitors to Vancouver and even residents are rightly appalled by the rampant open drug use and general chaos of the Downtown Eastside when they see it. But this is kind of the point because it is pretty hard to avoid seeing it. Unlike most North American cities where such problems are tucked away and hidden, Main and Hastings is a major Vancouver intersection and a main transit point for people heading into and out of the city. Both the Main and the Fraser buses, two of the busiest routes in the city, have stops right in front of he Carnegie Centre, site of much dealing activity but also of immaculately clean and safe public washrooms. I wonder if many of the people who have written letters here have bothered to visit them. I have and have taken my children in as well.

The roots of the drug problem in Vancouver are many and complex. The city is not only scenically stunning but is also a tough port city. Drugs have always been readily available. The crackdown by the police over the past few years has moved much of the open dealing and using to other parts of the city. A substantial number of the street drug addicts we see were mentally ill before they became addicted. Vancouver is rapidly becoming a city of the very rich and the very poor. Safe, affordable public housing is almost non-existent. Proper housing, located where people are living as opposed to warehousing in vast no-go areas, does make a difference.

Insite has made a big difference in a very small area of the city. Residents and business people, who once were firmly against such a facility in their neighbourhood, now just as firmly support its continued existence. But one facility really can only do so much. I wonder if the people who are horrified to see open homelessness, mental illness, drug dealing and drug using on their home turf would be willing to support mental health facilities, safe injection sites and housing in their neighbourhoods. If the kurfuffle in my neighbourhood (41st and Fraser) when the Coast Health Authority tried to build a residence for the mentally ill, multiply addicted homeless residents already here is any indication, I very much doubt it. NIMBYism is a major barrier to solving this problem city wide but it is not going to go away unless we spread these facilities city wide.

"Thanks Man" that's what he said, dying of an overdose in some obscene flop house. Someone put a blanket on him.

He was 35 years old, the youngest boy in a blended family of step-siblings and adoptees, me the only girl and also the youngest.

The safe house opened the year after he died, would it have saved his life? I don't know, Mike was always on the downward path, wasn't always the smartest about the basic choices in life, always making the wrong call. It doesn't matter, he's gone and I miss him.

As long as the walking wounded try to self-medicate, as long as the thrill seekers get themselves stuck with the needle, until we come up with something better, I applaud Vancouver for trying something different.

Keep it up "lotus-land".

While safer injecting sites are one approach to harm reduction among IDUs, there are other approaches which may be more acceptable in the conservative climate of the US. San Francisco's ISIS clinic for soft tissue infections has saved the city a considerable amount of money (over and above the operating costs of the clinic) while providing high quality medical care and referrals to treatment. Narcan distribution programs are showing promise in reducing overdose deaths. It is worth noting that safer injecting sites are not the only way to reduce morbidity and mortality among IDUs. It would have been nice if the article had briefly highlighted some of the other innovative harm reduction measures currently being implemented.