British comedian Russell Brand knows a thing or two about drug addiction, so when he praised InSite, Vancouver's supervised safe injection site on Twitter, it was no joke.
The comic was in the city to perform at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre Saturday, and he found time before the show to visit the Downtown Eastside, meet Liz Evans, executive director of the PHS Community Services Society that operates InSite, and tweet about it to his almost seven million followers.
"In Vancouver, visited the city's crown jewell, "insite". " Brand tweeted under his username, @RustyRockets. "Liz Evans is an inspiration."
InSite is not popular with the Canadian Conservative government, who tried to have its exemption status for heroin use overturned. But the Supreme Court of Canada ruled it should stay open, and said the government's previous decision to end the drug-law exemption threatened injection drug users' health and their lives.
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