By David P. Ball
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It's been a month of major changes for Vancouver's Overdose Prevention Site (OPS), which has saved hundreds of lives since it began operating, originally without governments' permission or blessing.

In the years since, as the toxic drug death toll climbed to an average four deaths a day — record high last year in the province's history, according to data released last week — health authorities have realized the essential role OPS and supervised consumption sites play in saving lives.

But the OPS outgrew its old indoor and outdoor locations, and this year moved to a new indoor facility at East Hastings and Columbia streets (the same building as Vancouver Co-operative Radio broadcasts from, in fact), as well as a new outdoor consumption site kitty-corner from the Tim Horton's at Tinseltown (International Village) Mall at Pender and Abbott streets. That location also offers safe drug inhalation as well as other methods of consuming, with supervision.

Sarah Blyth, the executive director and co-founder of OPS, told The Pulse on CFRO that she is excited about working in the much larger facilities, which addressed some of the shortcomings of their original, founding location.

And with deaths climbing, and more types of drug becoming contaminated with increasingly deadly opioids, the importance of all the sites is higher than ever.