The government supports needle exchanges as a legitimate intervention, but providing a site to facilitate the injection of illegal drugs is going too far, Tony Clement told the Globe and Mail in an interview here while attending the 17th International AIDS Conference.
Clement also said that it is up to each country to decide what HIV-AIDS preventive measures are appropriate and that Ottawa is pushing ahead with its plan to close a safe injection site in Vancouver.
He was referring to the PHS Community Services Society's Insite, which provides drug addicts safe needles and supervised injections.
The minister's statement goes against a new World Health Organization (WHO) guide for countries on how to best tackle the epidemic of HIV-AIDS.
The guide, announced earlier in the week, strongly endorsed many harm-reduction measures, including safe injection sites.
