LET'S GIVE SAFE SHOOTING GALLERIES A CHANCE

Many Canadians find it hard to feel sorry for injection drug addicts.
They're widely viewed as losers who lack the backbone to be contributing
members of society.

If they want to lie around in garbage-strewn alleys shooting up heroin or
cocaine with dirty needles, so be it. Let them suffer the consequences,
whether it be hepatitis C, HIV or an overdose. If Canada had a caste
system, junkies would be at the bottom of the heap.

We never see them anyway, aside from around Vancouver's notorious downtown
east side, so who cares if a bunch of low-lifes want to muck up their lives?

But what if one of those mangy junkies was in a hospital bed you needed?
What if you could have had that bed if the drug addict had had a clean
place to inject?

And what if the taxpayers could save hundreds of thousands of health-care
dollars a year simply by treating injection drug users as patients, not
criminals?

Would that change your mind? The Canadian Medical Association Journal hopes
so. In an editorial last week, the CMAJ called for safe, supervised
injection rooms, where injection drug users (IDUs) can shoot up with clean
needles and untainted water.

The reasons are compelling. About 100,000 Canadians inject cocaine and
heroin, the CMAJ pointed out. As well, over one-third of new cases of HIV
infection and more than 60% of new cases of hepatitis C result from
injection drug use.

According to one study published in the journal, Vancouver IDUs frequently
visit hospitals for preventable injection-related complications.

The main reasons for emergency visits and hospital admissions? Pneumonia
and skin abscesses - both attributable to unsafe injection techniques.

The study also noted that HIV-positive addicts use $1,752 more hospital
resources a year than non-infected junkies. Average Canadians, of course,
cost the health system far less than addicts.

Drug addiction won't disappear if Canada sets up safe injection sites but
if we're serious about harm reduction, it would be a mistake to dismiss the
idea, outright.

It could get junkies off the streets, reduce health hazards and help get
them into detox.

Needle-exchange programs are now commonplace in major Canadian cities. In
Edmonton, for instance, Streetworks handed out more than 800,000 needles
last year. And 99.9% of them were returned.

But needle exchanges do not guarantee addicts won't share syringes. In
fact, 27% of a group of Vancouver IDUs studied said they'd recently shared
"rigs," according to a report in the CMAJ.

Addicts said they'd shared needles because they had difficulty finding
clean syringes, they needed help shooting up or they injected frequently.

Alarmingly, almost 20% of the participants in the Vancouver study said they
shared needles even though they had access to sterile ones.

Seeing as needle exchanges haven't worked as well as expected, the CMAJ is
right to propose safe-injection facilities where addicts can shoot up in a
controlled setting with clean equipment.

At the same time, on-site health professionals could provide counselling on
everything from drug treatment to safe sex.

"It will take a certain sang-froid to see this idea through," declared the
CMAJ. "It will require that we face up to the severity of the drug problem
that Canadian communities are experiencing."

So it's a good sign that Health Minister Allan Rock has expressed
willingness to at least consider safe injection sites.

"We certainly won't go forward without the concurrence of the local
authorities," he said in Edmonton last week.

Injection rooms have been used in the Netherlands, Switzerland and Germany
for years. Australia has just begun clinical trials.

Canada should also set up a pilot project. We already know that safe
injection rooms prevent overdose deaths. There hasn't been a single OD
fatality in Europe's supervised sites.

But we need to find out whether controlled shooting galleries would reduce
risky behaviour, the transmission of disease and addiction in a Canadian
context.

Let's rise to the challenge.