Criminal Law: Impact of Overdose Prevention Sites in Canada's Prisons

This essay examines the introduction of overdose prevention sites within Canadian correctional facilities as a response to the opioid crisis. It explores the positive effects, such as harm reduction, supervised injection, and reduced spread of infectious diseases, while also considering the negative aspects, like limited operating hours and potential for unsupervised drug use. The discussion analyzes the legal framework, including federal government approvals and exemptions under the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act. The essay highlights the aims of these sites, which include saving lives, reducing the spread of diseases, connecting users with social services, and creating safer communities. Ultimately, the paper concludes that, despite some drawbacks, the benefits of implementing overdose prevention sites in prisons outweigh the disadvantages, setting a potential example for other countries grappling with similar challenges.

Running head: CRIMINAL LAW
Criminal Law
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Authors Note

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Essay:
Introduction:
The Canadian Correctional Service is planning to establish an overdose preventing
site as an alternate option to tackle the opioid crisis. Since the declaration of the drug related
overdoses as public health emergency in April of 2016 in Canada, sanctioning and
implementing of the overdose prevention sites (OPSs) have been facilitated. Overdose
prevention sites include health service supplying injections under supervision and instant
overdose responses (Bardwell et al., 2017). In this assignment, the effect of introducing the
overdose preventing sites inside the correctional homes has been discussed. It also focusses
on the problem regarding how the incarcerated persons in Canada who are drug addicts are
dealt with. In this paper, firstly, the positive effects of such implementation will be discussed.
Then, the negative effects will be discussed. Considering both of these, the final impact will
be analysed.
Discussion:
The assignment is concerned with the implementing the overdose prevention sites and
considers it as a proper way to control as well as uproot overdose deaths due to injection drug
use (Wallace, Pagan & Pauly, 2019). It is known that drug use affects everyone. Drug use
through injection is a significant health issue that has important effect on community
members using drugs and also their families. The effect can be in the form of death or
disability due to overdose, spreading infectious disease, poor mental condition, incarceration
and public space degradation.
Over dose prevention sites allow easy to access, life saving harm reduction services in
an environment which is free from any stigma for reducing the health effects and keeping the
individuals, their families in a safe environment (Boyd et al., 2018). They also helped to

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reduce increasing number of deaths caused due to opioid overdose. These sites allows to the
drug addicts injections under supervision, harm reducing supplies like clean syringes,
needles, disposal of used supplies, prevention of overdose and intervention in case of
overdose. These sites are also required to meet the necessary conditions for approval and will
operate for a period of 3 to 6 months. Such sites are funded usually by the Ministry of Health
and Long Term Care.
In Canada, the Overdose Prevention Sites are legalised by the Federal Government.
Their operation also requires approval from the Federal Government, granted with legal
exemption, under section 56 of the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act (CDSA) by the
Federal Minister of Health. In fact, changes have been made by the federal government to
expand the ability of the provinces to refer to the increasing crisis of opioid. As per the
federal policy, provinces that were experiencing emergency in public health can ask for
exemption under the provisions of the federal law for creating Overdose Prevention Sites on a
temporary basis. While responding to such request of change in policy of federal government,
the Health Minister may write a letter to the Federal Health Minister to consider the health
emergency because of the opioid issue (Ford, 2018). The letter may also request the Federal
Government to announce the approval and funding of the overdose prevention sites.
The reasons behind setting of Overdose Prevention Sites are many and have to be
understood critically. These sites form a part of greater harm reducing approach which drug
overdoses supports good health as a right of any human. These sites allow people pre
obtained doses of drugs and inject those addicted peoples in a clean place under a clean
environment under close supervision of an experienced and trained staff. The aims of the
Overdose Prevention Sites are as follows:

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1. Saving lives of people by decreasing the fatal as well as non fatal drug
overdose numbers by allowing education of safer use practices, prevention of
overdose and also intervention,
2. Reducing the spreading of infectious diseases like HIV, hepatitis C among
people who use used syringes by providing supply of sterile injections,
3. Connecting people who are drug users with other social, health and treatment
services like housing and other facilities,
4. Creating a safe community by causing the reduction of drug usage in public
places and discarding used needles.
In this part of the assignment, the disadvantages of setting up these Overdose
Prevention Sites will be discussed. Though the setting up of these Sites has many
advantageous, it has some short comings too. These are follows:
1. The Overdose Prevention Sites are said to operate in a particular time of a day,
specifically from 6 pm to 11pm. Outside this time zone, the people are free to
use these drugs. If they desire, they can use used syringes and thereby spread
infectious diseases.
2. Medical supervisors and health care workers who are entrusted to supervise
these Sites may not be available always, thus there can be a chance of
unsupervised drug practice.
3. Moreover, it lacked continuity and worked during public health emergency
only.
Conclusion:
Thus from the above discussion, it can be said that though setting of Overdose
Prevention Sites has few drawbacks, it has more advantages. Hence it should be allowed in

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the Canadian prisons to introduce overdose prevention sites in the correctional institutions.
These sites also provide examples of novel service as well as nimble implementing procedure
that amalgates the advantages of sanctioned injection service together with implementation
community wise. Hence if it is allowed in Canada, it can set an example for other countries to
follow it, especially in those countries that suffer from huge death rates caused due to over
dosage of drugs.

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References:
Ford, D. P. (2018). Support life-saving supervised consumption and overdose prevention
sites: open letter to Premier Doug Ford and Health Minister Christine Elliott.
Boyd, J., Collins, A. B., Mayer, S., Maher, L., Kerr, T., & McNeil, R. (2018). Gendered
violence and overdose prevention sites: a rapid ethnographic study during an overdose
epidemic in Vancouver, Canada. Addiction, 113(12), 2261-2270.
Wallace, B., Pagan, F., & Pauly, B. B. (2019). The implementation of overdose prevention
sites as a novel and nimble response during an illegal drug overdose public health
emergency. International Journal of Drug Policy, 66, 64-72.
Bardwell, G., Collins, A. B., McNeil, R., & Boyd, J. (2017). Housing and overdose: an
opportunity for the scale-up of overdose prevention interventions?. Harm reduction
journal, 14(1), 77.