Health committee  Not really, no.

Health committee  I operate in the alley in the Downtown Eastside. There are two alleys that are the most used by drug users. I was working at another social enterprise, and people were knocking on our back door.

Health committee  It's about two blocks away.

Health committee  Yes. They've just put one at St. Paul's Hospital, so that's really good. It would be great to have them in hospital areas, as well, where people can come and have.... They're very simple to operate. We have drug users who take care of each other. They get paid to be volunteers a

Health committee  There was a recent study showing it was on par, but I would say that about half of the people we see in the Downtown Eastside use meth to some degree.

Health committee  Yes, it's an increase over the years.

Health committee  Yes. Unfortunately, there are multiple crises going on right now with different drugs in general. More and more people are using drugs. Fentanyl can be in anything. We can test meth and find it in that. It's in crack cocaine. A lot of people smoke meth. When fentanyl is smoked,

Health committee  In our safe injection site, if we were able to give the 700 people who come a day something that we know the dosage of and that we know isn't contaminated with pig dewormer, rat poison and all kinds of you can't imagine what. They're injecting it into them. It causes all kinds of

Health committee  I don't know if any of the you know him, but Dr. Mark Tyndall from the B.C. Centre for Disease Control has a pilot project that he would like to bring that would make it easy for people to get safe access to heroin. I think that it should include stimulants as well, because peopl

Health committee  The main thing is disease prevention. It's cheaper to give people a needle than to have people go through all the treatments of hepatitis or HIV long term.

Health committee  Yes. In the Downtown Eastside there are a lot of people who use whatever is available and cheapest. I've done so many overdoses—you can't imagine—and I don't see people get up and be violent that way. People get upset. Sometimes they cry. They don't know what's happened to them.

Health committee  I just want to say that we are trained, and I've been trained, over time, in bringing down violence. It can be done but you need the proper training for that. It's very difficult on nurses in that environment, I think.

Health committee  The one that we set up is in one of the two most used alleys for drug use, and it had been before we set up. My response to that would be where people are using drugs, you would set one up there already, so that it doesn't have an impact on neighbourhoods. Also, we make sure that

Health committee  Yes, we have a drug testing machine that comes in a few days a week, and then we can test all drugs that come in. I think it's like 100,000 drugs and other analogues including.... You would be shocked at what people inject into their bodies and that they don't know what strength

Health committee  No, we don't. I've been working in shelters in the Downtown Eastside for years, in housing. Dealing with folks who come in who are in crisis, our staff is some of the best. We have people from InSite, but it can be very difficult and we certainly don't have the support we need.