never heard of supervised consumption before. was picturing a bunch of guards staring down at a buffet restaurant until I read the article.

For context on the drug problem in the Lower Mainland: currently it's centered around the Downtown Eastside in Vancouver. Richmond can be seen as a suburb of Vancouver (though Richmond Center is, in its own right, a thriving urban center), and most notably it's a heavily Asian-dominated community. For a number of reasons, there are relatively few drug users in Richmond and few overdoses or deaths.