Vancouver’s first indoor supervised inhalation room opened on Wednesday.

The BC Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS (BC-CfE) opened the facility at Hope to Health Research & Innovation Centre at 625 Powell St.

Dr. Kate Salters, a research scientist with the Epidemiology and Population Health program at the Centre, told Global News that the space already operates as a mixed supervised and injection site.

“We have seven injection spaces that you’ll see around that are injection booths with a table, a chair, sharps container and a mirror for safety,” she said.

“Then we also have these six supervised inhalation rooms or smoking rooms where people can come and either smoke and/ or ingest their drugs in a different way so they can inject and smoke in the spaces themselves.”

Salter said the rooms have a negative air pressure so a constant flow of fresh air is coming in and going out and once the doors are closed they are not locked and clients can use the space for as long as staff can accommodate them.

She said if there is an emergency or an overdose then staff is available to jump in and help.

“All of the air evacuates within 60 seconds and in the case of an emergency it can be evacuated within 30 seconds,” Salter added.

“There’s an emergency button both on the inside of the rooms and the outside of the rooms and that expedites the process of the air being removed from the space.”

Landon Hoyt, executive director of the Hastings Crossing Business Improvement Association, told Global News that this site is a welcome addition for the city and its residents.

“Given the change in how people use drugs on the streets, this is something that is desperately needed so that not only will we see lives saved through this opportunity and location, but also people using drugs less on the streets and in front of many businesses as well,” he said.

Hoyt said this location means people will also be able to access other health-care services and get people into treatment if they want it.

“It’s a chance to provide that care and that touchpoint with the health-care system and a very low barrier, peer-based approach where people can feel like they’re entering a space that’s trusted and welcoming and warm for them to be able to access that care rather than a more heavy-handed sort of approach,” he added.

Salter said it has taken years to get this inhalation room facility up and running.

“It has taken that length of time to make sure that we are following all of the rules and that we are abiding to all of the standards to make sure this place is as safe as possible,” she said.

“We know that there are other sites, like outdoor sites under tents and outdoor sites that we are trying to accommodate because this is now a crisis of smoking and smoking-related fatalities.

“So we are trying our best to accommodate that. And this is just another tool in our toolbox to make sure that we’re offering lifesaving services to those that are using drugs.”

There are other supervised inhalation sites across B.C. in cities such as Prince George, Duncan and Fort St. John.

The British Columbia Coroners Service says at least 192 people died in July in the province due to unregulated drug toxicity, down 15 per cent from the same month last year.

The service said that 1,365 people have died of drug toxicity this year up to the end of July, a rate of death that is also down.

Year-over-year drug deaths were down every month so far this year.

Coroners service data show the greatest number of suspected drug toxicity deaths this year have been in Vancouver with 296, Surrey with 130 and Greater Victoria with 101, while the Northern Health’s region has the highest concentration of cases at 75.7 deaths per 100,000 people.

— with files from The Canadian Press, Kristen Robinson and Grace Ke