'INJECTION CENTERS' SOUGHT FOR VANCOUVER ADDICTS

VANCOUVER, B.C. -- A woman squats on a stoop in an alley. She holds an
orange syringe in her right hand. With her left, she is squeezing the air
as if trying to catch an insect that is not there. Half of the dose of
heroin she had been injecting is still in her needle. She is in junkie limbo.

"She has done a hit of heroin. She hasn't even finished it, it's so good,"
explains Mel Hennan, who is patrolling this city's back alleys.

Next to the woman is a girl with pale skin and braids who looks as if she
could be the cashier at a fast food restaurant. Yet she's scraping the
alley with her black fingernails, looking for rocks of cocaine, holding her
syringe between her teeth like a toothpick.

This is heroin alley in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside, near the corner of
Main and West Hastings streets, the underworld scene of what police call
North America's largest open-air drug market. Here, some of the purest and
cheapest heroin and cocaine on the continent are bought and sold openly
along streets where tourists are warned to watch out for random needle
stickings. City officials call Vancouver's drug problem an epidemic as
incidents of overdoses soar and addicts crowd some street corners.

Last spring, Mayor Philip Owen proposed a radical plan to set up "safe
injection centers," where addicts could get clean syringes and inject their
drugs under the watch of trained health workers.

"These legally sanctioned facilities could provide a safe, secure
environment where drug users could inject under the care of health
professionals trained in safe injection techniques and overdose response
and away from the dirt and dangers of the street," Owen said.

Vancouver, a major seaport, is a point of entry for heroin and cocaine.
Since the 1980s, the drug market in Vancouver's Eastside has exploded as a
result of concentrated poverty, lack of adequate housing, high unemployment
and easy access to inexpensive heroin and cocaine in almost pure form. An
estimated 12,000 intravenous drug users roam the streets.

Since 1993, Vancouver has averaged 147 illegal drug overdose deaths
annually. As the death rate increases, so have cases of HIV and hepatitis C.

"In 1997, we had escalating HIV and AIDS cases among IV drug users," said
Heather Hay, regional network director for addiction services with the
health board for the Vancouver-Richmond area. "The Board of Health declared
a public health emergency. The health board's position is safe injection
sites are a tool to prevent drug overdose deaths."

The plan has drawn praise, but also strong opposition from business groups
that say more should be done to enforce drug laws and that such sites will
only lure more addicts into the area and harm legitimate businesses.

While U.S. cities fight drugs principally with tougher law enforcement,
Canadian officials are using a different weapon. They call it harm
reduction, an approach that treats addiction as a disease rather than a
crime and attempts to keep as many users as possible alive and healthy.

"In Canada, the drug trade has the potential to generate criminal proceeds
in excess of $4 billion (Canadian) at the wholesale level and of $18
billion at the street level," Owen said in a report. "Expectations that
extra officers at the street level can significantly alter a problem of
this scale and complexity are unrealistic."

Putting more officers on the streets only displaces dealers and forces them
to develop more sophisticated marketing strategies, Owen said. One that
emerged recently was called "dial-a-dope." Owen's report quoted a
middle-class cocaine user as saying: "You order a pizza. I'll order
cocaine. We'll see which one gets here quickest."

Other Canadian cities, such as Montreal, have considered providing safe
injection centers. Canada's top drug enforcement officer, Chief
Superintendent Robert Lesser of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, has said
such centers could stop the spread of HIV and hepatitis C. "I think it's
something we have to look at," Lesser said.

German and Swiss cities set up injection sites several years ago. The
clinics provide clean needles, distilled water, filters and spoons, and
often allow addicts 30 minutes to inject and feel the effects of their
dope. Such cities as Sydney and Madrid have opened sites more recently;
officials say they've helped reduce crime and disease dramatically.

Safe injection centers would bring dignity to addicts, said Ann Livingston,
project coordinator of the Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users, an
advocacy group made up of intravenous drug users and former users.