Councillor says its time to talk about supervised injection sites in Regina

Councillor Andrew Stevens believes it’s time the city take a serious look at the issue of supervised injection sites.

He said, “There’s always this tendency to be reactive and see what others are doing, bide our time. I think perhaps it’s the place of Regina to be a leader in the province to get something like this started.”

Stevens said personally, he supports harm reduction approaches to public health, but underlined the question of whether a supervised injection site should open would need to be tackled by health experts, community groups, police and multiple levels of government.

Shawna Oochoo, president and co-founder of White Pony Lodge, a group that patrols the North Central neighborhood on weekends, believes a supervised injection site would benefit the area.

Explaining she said,”The number of needles that we do find out here, you know having a safe injection site could dramatically reduce the number of needles that we do find.”

She estimates that each month volunteers pick up between 80 to 100 needles.