Fact Sheet

Insight into Insite

Insite, North America’s first medically supervised injecting facility, has been open in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside since September 2003. Legally, the facility could only open if the Canadian government granted a special exemption to existing drug laws. The government granted this exemption on the condition that the facility be scientifically evaluated.

The scientific evaluation of Insite has been carried out by researchers at the BC Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS and the Department of Medicine at the University of British Columbia. The research has been conducted according to the highest ethical standards, and the research methods have been approved by the University of British Columbia—Providence Health Care Research Ethics Board.

The results of the evaluation research have been published in more than 25 articles in the world’s leading peer-reviewed scientific and medical journals. This means that scientists from around the world have closely examined the researchers’ findings and have agreed with their conclusions.