Please forgive the newbie for some thread necromancing; I stumbled upon this thread while researching for a school debate so my finding the discussion is rather late.
I felt it would merit signing up and posting to point out something that seems to have been overlooked by many repliers in this thread, or at least not explicitly said: Supervise Injection Sites are not meant to take out addiction in the first place. SIS are part of one component of the four pillars strategy, the rest being prevention, treatment, enforcement. Following that vein, judgement of Insite's worth would be determined on effectivity in harm reduction and nothing else.
In this manner, I feel SIS are worth keeping but does not mean that our community can wash our hands of the downtown eastside and our addicted population. Personally, I think much more should be done on the prevention stance, education to be exact. I'm a grade 10 student and technically have never completed any drug abuse education programme. I was supposed to take D.A.R.E. in elementary school (grade 5, if I recall correctly) but I found it too juvenile and uneducative, even at that age. When I spoke out about it in class, it was decided that I would be kicked out for all D.A.R.E. sessions.
