"As someone who believes in making decisions based on evidence, I would have no problem with going to see what goes on there," he said.

A visit to Insite would be experience, not evidence. Making decisions based on evidence requires familiarizing yourself with the jurisprudence and scientific literature on the subject.

In reality, criminal prohibition impedes and competes with education, treatment and harm reduction. We allocate about 80 per cent of our drug control budget to law enforcement, about 15 per cent to treatment and about 2 per cent to harm reduction.

In addition to saving lives and money, supervised injection sites increase uptake into detox and treatment. Insite, for example, shares a building with a detox clinic called "Onsite." SIFs also reduce public drug use and disorder and discarded syringes without increasing drug use or prohibition-related crime.