A researcher at Memorial University says Newfoundland and Labrador is far ahead of the curve when it comes to providing safe drug supplies to rural areas.

Gillian Kolla, a public health researcher at Memorial, is studying safe drug use policies and says areas like Toronto and Vancouver should be looking at what rural communities have been doing to provide a safe supply to drug users.

She says while there’s more work to be done, including better access to supervised drug consumption sites, smaller communities have taken a different approach to providing safe supplies.

“When all of our focus is on cities like Toronto and Vancouver, we miss how we actually need to be reaching out across the entire community, including in places that might not have as many services available.”

“So things like how we can build up pharmacies as distribution points, things like how we can use our mail system in order to ensure that everybody has access to sterile harm reduction equipment. There are really innovative things that we could be learning from and that might be helpful across the entire country.”