US CITIES MONITORING SAFE-INJECTION SITE

VANCOUVER -- Some of the toughest cities south of the border are
watching Vancouver closely as they try to deal with hardcore drug
addiction, say delegates at an international drug conference.

Deborah Peterson Small, of the New York group Breaking the Chains,
said places such as San Francisco and New York are taking note of the
city with the only safe-injection site in North America.

"San Francisco has started looking at safe-injection sites as an
experiment," Ms. Small said.

"We hope that city governments in Baltimore, Newark and New Orleans
that have significant problems with heroin and injection drug use
will look to Vancouver as a place that provides a positive example of
ways to reduce overdose deaths," said Ms. Small, who was one of about
80 delegates at the conference called Beyond 2008.

The conference is one of several taking place around the world - but
the only one in North America - that are sanctioned by the United
Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.

The conferences are intended to gather the best ideas to address the
drug scourge, ideas which will be submitted to the UN this summer.

Members of Ms. Small's group have been advocates for other U.S.
groups "to look at Canada for different ways to approach the issue of
drug abuse and adopt some of the harm-reduction measures you've
adopted here, including expanding needle exchange and having
safe-injection sites."

Ms. Small isn't holding her breath that New York will have a
safe-injection site, but said San Francisco may be the first American
city to use the idea.

Authorities there are willing to "look at alternative approaches and
harm reduction approaches," she said.

Insite, the safe-injection site in the Downtown Eastside, began
operating in 2003 and is funded by the B.C. government. It allows
people to inject their own drugs under medical supervision as a way
to reduce harm connected to drug use.

Susan Shepherd, manager of the Toronto Drug Strategy Secretariat, the
city's drug police office, said Canada's largest city has also
investigated Insite.