Client says many would be dead without medical heroin at Vancouver clinic
VANCOUVER — The smell of rubbing alcohol permeates a tiny room where chronic heroin users inject a pharmaceutical-grade version of the drug three times a day to just feel normal.
Justin Hall, 48, exits the freshly cleaned injection room at the Crosstown Clinic in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside after his second visit of the day. He plans to return in the evening for his third “shift,” the same routine he has followed for 2 1/2 years.
“A lot of people just muscle it, they don’t bother with the veins,” Hall says as the next group of people line up outside the room containing eight orange chairs in front of a counter and a mirrored wall.
Nurses behind a glass wall slide doses of heroin through an opening, dispensing an average of 200 mg of heroin. Patients must inject the opioid and leave the room within seven minutes before it’s cleaned for the next group.