Yukon supervised drug consumption site upgraded to allow indoor smoking

People who use illicit drugs may now smoke their substances at the supervised drug consumption site in Whitehorse, one of the first in Canada to allow inhalation indoors, the Yukon government announced Monday.

A new room with an upgraded ventilation system has been added to the facility, the only one in Yukon, which opened last fall to provide services such as drug testing and access to the overdose-reversing medication naloxone.

Bronte Renwick-Shields, executive director of Blood Ties Four Directions Centre, which operates the Whitehorse facility, said allowing people to inhale their substances was always part of the plan but acquiring equipment and completing the upgrades had been delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Inhalation is the most common method of consumption for substances like crack cocaine, fentanyl and methamphetamine in the territory, she said, and it's important that harm reduction services reflect the community's needs.

"We had heard loud and clear from many of the folks who use substances in our community that (allowing supervised inhalation) would be a requirement for this site to be successful," Renwick-Shields said in an interview.

"We continued to hear throughout the last few months, since the site opened, that that would increase the traffic to the site, and that many people were waiting for inhalation services to be available."

Any unregulated substances may be smoked at the site, which provides safe smoking kits with equipment such as unused pipes, she noted.

The upgraded site in Whitehorse is a critical part of Yukon's response to the substance use health emergency declared in January, Health Minister Tracy-Anne McPhee said a statement.

At the time, Dr. Catherine Elliott, the acting chief medical officer of health, reported 23 deaths from toxic drugs in 2021, a 475 per cent increase from 2019.

Statistics released last year showed the territory had the highest per capita opioid overdose death rate in Canada at 48.4 per 100,000 people.

Annie Blake, the member of the legislature for Vuntut Gwitchin, welcomed the upgrades in Whitehorse, saying every death from drug poisoning is preventable and she's looking forward to the expansion of harm reduction services in rural areas.

The supervised consumption site does not supply drugs for people to use. Instead, it offers a safe place for people to consume their own drugs with trained health professionals on hand, if necessary, the government said.

Renwick-Shields said she hopes to see expanded access to opioid substitution therapies like methadone and safe prescription alternatives to illicit drugs in addition to harm reduction services throughout Yukon.

Blood Ties had looked at an indoor inhalation space offered by the organization Prairie Harm Reduction in Saskatoon as a model for the upgrades at the site in Whitehorse, she added.

In British Columbia, Island Health said six of its supervised consumption sites allow smoking in settings that are protected from the weather.

Sites in Victoria, Cowichan, Port Alberni, Campbell River and Nanaimo have structures with heating and ventilation, a spokesman for the authority said.

When Island Health announced last October it was opening a temporary site in Victoria to allow people to inhale their drugs, it said data from the provincial coroners' service showed that smoking had been the most common method for people consuming illicit drugs since 2017.