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Despite the availability of needle exchange programs in Canada, the actual injection of drugs may take place in an unsafe or unhygienic environment, increasing the risk of overdose and infection. In some countries, supervised injection sitesj are provided to decrease these risks. Supervised injection sites are legally accepted and medically supervised facilities designed to provide people who use drugs by injection with a safer and more hygienic site where they can inject drugs. They are provided in order to reduce the hazards of unsafe injection practices and also to counteract the public order problems associated with illegal injection drug use and are considered to be a low threshold service usually embedded within a harm reduction strategy. There are some positive evaluation data from countries that have tested and implemented supervised injection sites. Some results show decreased rates of overdose, fewer needles found in the environment, fewer people injecting in public, and reduced criminality. There is much discussion regarding the effectiveness, feasibility, and applicability to the Canadian context.
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