The Federal Health Minister is weighing into concerns raised by some Kamloops business owners about drug use near a supervised consumption site downtown.

Ginette Petitpas Taylor says she understands the concerns, but adds that supervised consumption sites save lives.

“Before that we formed government, we certainly recognized that in this country we had one supervised consumption site that was operational and the government of the day brought it to the Supreme Court of Canada because they wanted them shutdown,” she said during a stop in Kamloops. “We are committed to making sure that harm reduction is incorporated in our model, and we also recognize that supervised consumption sites are part of that.”

She says its up to communities to apply for more supervised consumption sites if there is the need locally.

“We are certainly not the department that imposes these services on communities. Communities are the ones that make applications to Health Canada and we are the ones that provide them with the exemption under the CDSA. Once again, its really a communities decision and there’s a consultation process that takes part in that, but at the end of the day, it’s really up to the communities to make those determinations.”

Kamloops councillor Mike O’Reilly says the city could move the mobile safe-injection site when not in use, but he says ultimately more support services are needed to cut down on vagrancy.