A worker assembles an injection kit together for a client in Vancouver. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Richard Lam/ file
VANCOUVER - A lawyer for a group that wants the federal government to keep a safe-injection site open in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside says a public health crisis was brewing in the area for more than a decade before the facility opened.
Monique Pongracic-Speier told B.C. Supreme Court that injection drug use had become an epidemic in Canada's poorest postal code and the site now provides an important health service.
Pongracic-Speier represents the Portland Hotel Society, which co-manages the site, and she says the facility is part of an overall harm-reduction strategy.
The facility opened in 2003 and allows people to inject their own drugs, including heroin and cocaine, under the supervision of a nurse, but it needs an exemption from Canada's drug laws to operate.
The exemption runs out at the end of June and the Portland Hotel Society and a group representing Vancouver drug addicts are in court arguing the federal government has no jurisdiction over the site.
They say because it provides a health service, it is under the jurisdiction of the provincial government, which has already said the site should not close.
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