Needle Exhange to Johnson Street?
VibrantVictoria has learned that City Councillor Phillipe Lucas and Harm Reduction Victoria are investigating the possibility of opening a needle exchange in the 700 block Johnson Street, in a storefront location at the bottom of the City-owned Johnson Street Parkade.
The City of Victoria's Johnson Street parkade. A vacant storefront has been identified as a potential needle exchange location. Photo by Robert Randall © VibrantVictoria.ca.
Both Lucas and HRV have been long-time advocates of a permanent Downtown needle exchange, saying the vacuum left by the closure of the Cormorant Street exchange in 2008 is unacceptable. Subsequent attempts by the Vancouver Island Health Authority to open exchanges on Pandora Avenue and Princess Street failed after neighbours complained that the social disorder and chaos associated with the old Cormorant Street facility would be duplicated anew. The former location became notorious as a destination for drug users and buyers throughout the region.
The proposed exchange is not part of VIHA ’s harm reduction strategy. VIHA recently announced that four south Island sites have been chosen for distribution of harm reduction supplies but that none of them were in Downtown Victoria.
Fellow City Councillor and Liaison to Downtown Charlayne Thornton-Joe says that any new needle exchange would have to be approved by City Council first, meaning that this proposal is anything but a done deal.
VibrantVictoria’s discussion forum contains threads on homelessness and addiction and the needle exchange.
Copyright © 2010 by VibrantVictoria.ca. All rights reserved.
Responses to this Headline or Article
The five most recent replies to VibrantVictoria.ca's discussion forum's Needle Exchange - Updates, Opinions and Other... thread, the most relevant thread to the above headline or article:
Baro
Aug 05, 2010 at 8:51 pmBuy the old Blethering place, re-name it to a needle exchange/tea house.
aastra
Aug 14, 2010 at 12:57 pmQuote: As a resident of 760 Johnson Street, plans for a needle exchange literally next door to our home brings grave concern.It's funny, just a few years ago people were fretting about how that building was going to ruin the neighbourhood. New condominiums? Uproar. Needle exchange? Crickets.
aastra
Aug 14, 2010 at 1:02 pmMethinks there would be quite a lot of very ironic outrage if somebody were to propose a new condo building on the 900-block of Pandora. Condominiums ruin neighbourhoods, don't ya know.
heather h
Aug 18, 2010 at 12:33 pmHarm Reduction Victoria (HRV) was not contacted about this article. Not sure where the author got his information from.
Heather, HRV
sebberry
Sep 30, 2011 at 10:55 am
Quote:
OTTAWA — The Harper government said Friday it is disappointed but will comply with a unanimous Supreme Court of Canada ruling which concluded that the government's attempt to shut down North America's only supervised injection site violates the Charter of Rights.
The judges said the government's 2008 move to deny a permit extension to Insite, in Vancouver's downtrodden Downtown Eastside, was "arbitrary," threatened to undermine health and safety, and was unconstitutional.
