Five years on...

...Insite has proved a disappointment to many in Vancouver. It has also become the object of partisan conflict.

The Conservative federal government of Stephen Harper dislikes the project.

A committee set up to advise it on the issue found that only about 500 of Vancouver’s 8,000 addicts use Insite each day, and fewer than 10% of those use it for all their injections.

It found no clear evidence of any increase in treatment, nor of any fall in HIV cases. It did estimate that the project might have saved one life per year but found that overdose deaths were still about 50 a year among addicts.

Crime continues unabated as addicts steal to feed their habits, something which frustrates the local police.

*